


Fly Me (Back to Earth)

by vinnie2757



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Cid is a master of denial and compartmentalisation, Explicit Language, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Slow Burn, cid's got the dokis but he wont admit it, idiots to lovers, listen its lockdown and im a 90s kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 103,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23345722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: He's always known the truth, which is that he loves her. But he's spent so long denying it and convincing himself that he doesn't, that now that the world is ending thanks to these numbskulls and their brilliant ideas, now it might be too late to say anything at all.[Cid/Shera, throughout the game.]
Relationships: Cid Highwind/Shera
Comments: 45
Kudos: 60





	1. Home Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> Some small liberties taken with time frame/location/etc, just to make it work. Working on the principle that you get Yuffie and Vincent at the first available opportunity, and thereby have full party by the time you get Cid.
> 
> I've really, really enjoyed writing this. I've absolutely loved it. I've loved coming back to this fandom so much.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Cid goes to the kitchenette long after the others have retired. The inn is quiet, still. It’s not much of an inn, but Yuffie had negotiated with the innkeeper to get them rooms for the night, which was nice of her. It’s her home, from what he understands, He can see the stars from the window, and he stands there looking at them for several minutes before moving to the reason he came in here in the first place. Snagging the kettle with one hand and rifling in his pocket with the other, he dials without looking and shoves the PHS between his shoulder and ear as he fills the kettle.

The PHS rings once, twice, three times, and on the fourth, it connects.

‘Captain?’ Shera sounds harried.

Cid has fought in a war, against several enemies. He worked, until about forty-eight hours ago, for the worst company on the Planet. He’s crashed bombers, _dropped_ bombs. He’s jettisoned himself out of failing aircraft. He’s served in the military, he’s worked with mechanisms that can tear his arm off. He moved in with _Shera_ of all people (albeit, not by choice). He’s been through some shit. He doesn’t startle. But her tone, so quick, so quiet, as though terrified, as though evading discovery, terrifies him. Shera isn’t a fighter, she wouldn’t know what to do. He imagines she’d be upstairs, if she’s hiding. The words tumble out of him without his bidding, just as quick, just as harried.

‘There’s a handgun taped under the top of my bedside unit.’

‘You’re _alive_ ,’ she breathes, all worry leaving her. ‘I thought you were _dead_.’

He’ll be dead if she gives him more palpitations like that, and he almost says it. But her relief, her heavy sigh. It takes the words from him before he can get them off his teeth.

‘Take more than that to kill me,’ he assures her instead.

She makes a noise between her teeth, disappointed but not surprised. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

‘What choice did I have? Lose the _Bronco_ as well as everything else?’

‘You could have been killed!’

He pours the water in, tips the milk up. It sloshes over the counter.

‘Fuck sake, too much milk. We all die, Shera, one way or another.’

‘That’s not the point!’

‘Then what the fuck _is_ the point? Don’t you get it? I haven’t got a job now, so what else is there? ShinRa are going to destroy the Planet, and they’re going after Sephiroth, so they’re going to make everything worse, no doubt about that. Got some real numbskulls ready to take them on, so it’s worth a laugh.’

‘Your life is worth a laugh?’ she demands.

‘Well, it’s a fucking joke these days, so yeah. Fuck it. I’ll save the planet, why the fuck not? And besides which, who was it that led these numbskulls out to take the _Bronco_ in the first place?’

She’s silent for a moment, and he can hear the angry purse of her lips, the wrinkle between her eyebrows. Hell, he can imagine her, pushing her glasses up off her face and rubbing her eyes.

‘You are worth _more_ ,’ she tells him, and he hates that she sounds desperate.

‘Woman,’ he snaps, and then takes a breath. Cid, he tells himself, you promised yourself to be better than this. ‘Shera,’ he tries instead.

‘Captain,’ she bites back.

‘Listen!’ There’s the temper again. She’s impossibly good at getting his back up with the least effort imaginable. He’s never been so _angry_ as he gets with her, and he’s never been so – so – oh.

‘Listen to _what_?’ she says, disrupting the train of thought before it really gathers speed. ‘You throwing your life away, because it’s _funny_? Because you think you’re worth so little that you can just get yourself killed? You think it won’t matter to anyone?’

‘Shera,’ he starts, trying to cut her off, but she’s been brewing this all day, and she cares, he knows that, but _Gaia,_ she can get on his last nerve!

‘No, Captain! Listen to me for _once_! I owe you _everything_ , and I will pay that back until the day I die, not the day _you_ die! Don’t you _dare_ do something so stupid that it gets you killed! I will _never_ forgive you!’

‘I ain’t asking your forgiveness!’ he snaps, louder than he means to.

Not yet, anyway. Give it six months, and he will be on his knees, torn to shreds by the reality of what he’d been putting her through.

‘You aren’t getting it!’ she snarls, and slams the PHS down.

He raises his eyebrows, blinks at the dial tone, as though he’s surprised. She’ll cool off in a minute, he thinks, she’ll call back and she’ll grovel because she’s mortified at losing her temper with him. She does this occasionally. Gets upset, snaps at him, and then when she calms down, she comes crawling with an apology. He’ll accept it, because in some deep part of him, that he’ll never own up to, but that had the retort about Cloud’s insinuation that they were _married_ (one day, one day she’ll have him, and his finger itches) so quick to his lips, he’s proud of her. She might be the doting type, the grovelling sort, but there’s a spitfire in her chest, and sometimes it bursts out.

Usually at him, because he’s been an obnoxious asshole, but it’s there. She has a backbone, she just hides it beneath a baggy sweater.

Yeah, he thinks, sipping at tea made tepid by too much milk, and wiping the counter down with his sleeve. Yeah, she’ll call back in a minute.

* * *

When he comes downstairs in the morning, having had a very unsatisfactory strip-wash in cold water with cheap soap because he suspects that this is not an inn at all (too many cats, for a start), scrubbing his face with a hand, he catches Tifa staring at him through his fingers. Her hair isn't done, and a spoon of cereal is halfway to her mouth.

'What?' he grunts, and goes to the kettle.

She'd filled it, but Aerith hadn't surfaced yet (if she had, she'd be at the table, making a nuisance of herself) so it wasn't warm. Making his own tea is a foreign feeling. He'd put too much milk in last night, and this morning he puts too little in. How did Shera get it perfect every time?

He's not going to embarrass himself by asking.

'Nothing,' Tifa replies. 'Nothing at all.'

He can feel her eyes on the back of his neck, and he scratches it reflexively.

'Then eat your goddamn breakfast,' he tells her, muted.

He knows full well, as he takes his tea outside to smoke, that she heard him - not rowing, because it wasn't a row - on the phone. He knows he hadn't exactly been quiet about it, because why would he have been? Shera had gotten his last nerve between her teeth, and he'd had enough of it. So he'd snapped, and she'd shown half a backbone, and that had been the end of it.

She never did call him back. He'd lain awake, stewing over it, waiting for his PHS to go, but no. Nothing. Radio silence.

She'll call by six, he knows this for a fact.

* * *

At exactly seven fifteen, they realise that they’ve been stitched up. Yuffie is gone, and so is ninety percent of their materia.

* * *

Shera calls at five-thirty-three exactly. He knows this because he's staring at the clock. Aerith wants to know why, but he can't bring himself to tell her.

Yuffie is happy to do so, as though she hadn’t been a pain in their ass all day, announcing for all and sundry to hear, 'he had a row with his wife, he's waiting for her to apologise.'

'Fuck right off,' he barks, 'it was not a row.'

It's only when Aerith's coy smile has alerted him to what he's saying that he realises.

He'd argued the row not the wife. Fuck sake.

Shera calls, and he almost lets it ring out, but that's needlessly cruel. He answers, jovial enough.

'You took your time,' he says, and why she doesn't hang up on him, he will never know.

He'd hang up on himself. Some days he might as well just hang himself and be done with it.

'Well, I still have a life,' she says, arch. 'Um. I'm sorry, Captain. I lost my temper, and it's not right.'

'No,' he agrees, but can't bring himself to return the apology.

'ShinRa have been here,' she says, soft. 'They want to know if I know where you've gone.'

'Have you told them?'

'No,' she says, 'I haven't, because I don't know where you are. I saw the Bronco go down over the water, but beyond that.'

He hears her shrug.

'We're in Wutai,' he says. 'It's been - it's been a long couple days.'

That was one word for it. After a horrendous journey, full of bickering and sweating and complaining, Yuffie had stolen all their shit in the middle of the night, and then they'd had to go and _rescue_ her the next afternoon after spending all morning hunting for her, and he can't get the dirty feeling of that _asshole_ off his skin. Long does not even begin to describe the shit they have had to deal with in the last 48 hours.

'Wutai?' she breathes. 'Has it changed much?'

'Shithole,' Cid grunts.

Yuffie looks offended, but can't possibly hear Shera to have the context. He looks at her. She sticks her tongue out. He makes a snipping motion with two fingers, and she fake cries, draws a tear down her cheek with her middle finger.

'I've heard some horrible things about what's been going on since the war,' Shera says, cutting off his diatribe to the teenager before it can start, without even realising she’s doing it. 'About what they're making them do.'

'Nothing too bad,' Cid says, 'from what I've seen. Usual tourist trap bullshit. Tradition paraded around for the tourists and cheap knock off statues and plates and shit for them to buy at hiked prices.'

The thought crosses his mind, for a second, that if he hadn't had a hand in this shithole being the shithole that it is, that Shera might like it. It had tea ceremonies and ladies in pretty clothes, and it's the sort of pseudo cultural thing that she's into. If they manage to get all this shit sorted, fuck Sephiroth up and bring ShinRa down and all that, if he’s still alive at the end of it. Well, it’s Shera’s birthday soon.

He scratches the back of his head, and catches a whiff of his armpit. _Shit_ , he stinks. That’s what you get for running around after a fucking brat all day, climbing up mountains and all that shit. Fuck sake. He hadn’t even had a toothbrush, had to go and buy one like a fucking savage from the shop in the morning, in the middle of trying to hunt Yuffie down.

(Thankfully, she’d been hidden behind a crate in the shop, and he’d kicked the crate, hard, when he realised she was there, but he wasn’t quick enough to catch her.)

‘You alright, Captain?’ Shera asks.

‘Yeah, I stink, is all.’

‘Well,’ Shera hums, because she has the misfortune of living and working with him, and when he hasn’t had at the very least a strip-wash, he could out-stink a cow. ‘You have a bar of soap at the inn, right? I’m sure there must at least be a bar of soap. It’s summer, you’ll dry out, and if you wash your socks, they’ll dry overnight.’

It’s like having your mother on your case, he thinks. Or a wife. What Cloud said comes back to him, and he shudders. Fucking haunting him now, that is.

‘Yes, boss,’ he snorts.

‘Do you know where you’re going next?’ she asks, ‘you said something about Sephiroth.’

‘The brat said they were hunting him down,’ Cid says, ‘somewhere called the Temple of the Ancients.’

‘It’s down south,’ she replies automatically. ‘It’s been abandoned for a long time, though. I can’t imagine what’s there.’

‘We know,’ he nods. ‘Something’s there. We’ll start heading down in the morning.’

‘Keep in touch,’ she says, ‘if there’s anything I can do to help, I want to.’

‘Stay the fuck out of trouble,’ he tells her, and hangs up.

* * *

His socks are still damp in the morning.

‘Guys,’ he says, padding barefoot into the common area.

Cloud looks up from his cereal. Aerith holds up the kettle and he nods, so she makes up a second mug. Barret is scowling at a newspaper. Yuffie and Vincent and Red are attempting (key word) to do a jigsaw they started last night. Red has opinions about Yuffie’s methods. Vincent does not want to be there but Yuffie keeps handing him pieces. Tifa looks like she wants to go back to bed.

‘We need to return to Rocket Town,’ he says, ‘I need more socks, I can’t live my fuckin’ life like this.’

‘You need a shower, never mind more socks,’ Yuffie says, under her breath, in the kind of way that people down the street would have heard her.

‘Yes,’ he agrees, ‘I fucking do. You know how hard it is to have a shower when someone uses the hot water for a fucking hour? Especially when their own house is not fifty yards away?’

She sticks two fingers up at him, and he is so ready to cut those fingers off her fucking hand. Vincent soundlessly puts his hand on hers and pushes it down out of his face, then clicks another piece into place.

Tifa rubs her eyes. ‘Cloud,’ she says, ‘what do you think? Have we got time to go back?’

He shrugs, shoves another spoon of cereal in his mouth.

‘Don’t see why not,’ he says, ‘it’s kind of on the way to the Temple. And we might be able to find some more info out from ShinRa. Shera said they’ve been coming by, right?’

Cid nods. ‘They’re up her fuckin’ ass over the _Bronco_. Wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t waiting on the porch for us.’

Cid calls ahead, lets Shera know they’re stopping by, and it’s been a long day by the time they get there. It’s been sunny, and warm, and he’s sweating through his already sweated-through clothes, made worse since he has no deodorant to help him. Yuffie has been driving him _insane_ , talking absolute _bullshit_ about how much he stinks, like the strip-washing he’s been doing every fucking morning ain’t enough. He’s smoked half a pack, got off the _Bronco_ to walk for the better part of ten miles, deliberately steered the _Bronco_ in a way that made _everyone_ motion-sick, and finally told her to just shut the fuck up.

‘You shouldn’t talk to a child like that,’ she tells him, arch, and he’d scream, he’d genuinely just scream, but Aerith puts a hand on his arm, and tells him that Rocket Town’s right there.

‘Shera’s there,’ she says, like that fucking _helps_ at all. ‘She’s got socks for you.’

The thought of clean socks actually helps a little bit more than he expected it to.

‘You know, kid,’ he says, ‘you’re alright.’

‘I know,’ she replies, and gives his arm a squeeze before hopping off the Bronco before it’s stationary, ‘that’s why I’m here.’

That’s if she doesn’t get herself killed first, he thinks, and yanks on the brake to get the _Bronco_ stationary.

ShinRa are, in fact, waiting on the outskirts of Rocket Town for them. Shera hadn’t warned them, because she hadn’t been able to get hold of him, but it’s not a problem. Tifa dumps her pack and in half a metre has built up enough speed to jump and kick one of the guards in the head. It’s a very mean thing to do, because he drops like a bag of bricks, but by then Barret’s lamped the other guard, and that’s that. Vincent grabs one and Barret grabs the other and they drag them into the bushes.

‘Well,’ Cloud says.

Tifa shrugs, and picks her pack up. ‘They’d have only called reinforcements if we gave them a chance,’ she says, and gestures to Cid. ‘Lead the way, Captain.’

A couple of the townspeople are happy to have Cid back in the streets, greeting him with clapped hands, and a wife of one of the mechanics hands him a batch of potions.

‘I figured,’ she says, ‘if you’re really taking on ShinRa like Shera says, you’re going to need help.’

He nods, and thanks her, but his ears a little bit pink.

Aerith eyes him. He sticks a finger up at her, and she puts a hand on her chest in mock horror. He chooses to ignore her, and stomps off to the house.

‘Shera!’ he hollers as he gets to the door, ‘get the kettle on!’

Shera appears from the back, wiping her hands on a rag.

‘Captain!’ she smiles, and the girls titter behind him. He sticks four fingers up behind his back. ‘I’m glad to have you back! I just finished installing the new heater.’

‘Heater?’ he asks, and gestures at the party to dump their shit, following her to the kitchen. ‘What the fuck we need a new heater for? You breaking all my shit, like I don’t have enough to worry about?’

‘I thought,’ she says, and puts the rag on a hook on a cabinet, ‘well, with the travelling you’ve been doing, and how far Wutai is – I thought you’d all like to get clean. It’s dusty this time of year, and our water is enough for us, but there’s eight of you.’

‘Nine,’ Cait says, and she blinks a little.

‘You’re a robot,’ she says, confused.

‘Oh,’ Cait replies, and then, ‘yeah, I forgot.’

Cloud looks at him. ‘You forgot you were a robot?’

The cat does not reply, even with the eyes on him. Shaking his head, Cid turns back to Shera.

‘Gonna put our bills through the roof,’ he grunts, ‘but good thinking.’

‘I’ll pay the extra on the bills,’ she tells him, and finally fills the kettle.

‘Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he waves her off, ‘I’ll sort it. Fuck knows with what job, but I’ll sort it.’

She nods, and asks who wants a cup of tea. Aerith comes to help her, and Cid announces, loudly, that as it is his house, he gets dibs on using the shower first.

Nobody complains.

Once they’re all washed and changed and the girls have enlisted themselves as help with cooking dinner (much to Cid’s dismay; it’s his house, they shouldn’t be lifting a finger, but they insist), they get to talking about what’s happened since his abrupt departure.

‘ShinRa are on the door day and night,’ Shera tells him, standing against the cabinet with a mug in her hands.

Aerith is stirring a pot of rice, having slapped Shera’s hand with the spoon when she tried to take over, and Tifa has chopped a bunch of vegetables, waiting to toss them into the pan. Planet only knows what they’re making, but it’s going to be good, Cid is sure. The girls are good at cooking on the fly, and Shera ain’t killed him yet.

‘Hasslin’ you?’ he asks, and Shera hesitates before shaking her head.

‘They tried to, but they gave up when they worked out I didn’t know anything.’

She adjusts her glasses, and looks nervous. There’s something she’s not telling him, and he’ll get it out of her later.

‘So long as they ain’t layin’ a hand on yer,’ he says, and she shakes her head.

‘They haven’t tried to.’

‘Good.’

Things fall silent for a second or two, and Tifa gives Cloud a _look_ , so he says, ‘we’re very grateful that you’re opening your home to us.’

Tifa makes a noise in the back of her throat, and faces the wall. Aerith makes a tiny, whining sort of noise, like she’s trying not to laugh. They don’t dare look at each other, and continue with making dinner.

Shera blushes, and hides behind her mug.

‘You’re welcome,’ she says, ‘I – um. I went to the market, this morning, when Cid called to say you were heading back, and I – I made up a pack of provisions for you, so that you don’t have to worry about getting supplies.’

‘That’s it, woman, waste more money we don’t have,’ Cid grunts, and Barret kicks him under the table.

‘Don’t be fuckin’ rude,’ he says, and then offers Shera a sheepish smile. ‘Thank you. We appreciate it.’

She nods. ‘It’s not a lot.’

(It is a lot. Barret and Tifa will look through it later in the evening when everyone’s retired, and there will be Hi-Potions, Phoenix Downs, _Ethers_ , which Planet knows they’ve been trying to get their hands on for _weeks_ , a few tinctures, and there will be camp-ready food. Instant soups, noodles, tinned meats and vegetables. Granola bars, even _chocolate_. What they don’t know is that Shera had packed Cid’s pack, too, in readiness for his arrival, and hidden his favourite tea in the fold of a pair of socks. There were extra cigarettes in there too, but just the one pack, because it was his worst habit and she hates it.)

‘Thank you,’ Cloud says, ‘Barret’s right, we do appreciate it. It can be a ballache getting supplies at times, what with ShinRa out there looking for us.’

She nods, assures him that that was her thinking.

‘Dinner’s nearly ready,’ Aerith announces, ‘if you want to make yourselves comfortable.’

Dinner is – well, it’s glorious. Having a homecooked meal, one that they haven’t had to scrabble together in that godawful fake-inn, or have at _Turtle’s Paradise_ , with fresh bread, and being able to eat without worrying about being attacked by insects or ShinRa troops, or the Turks changing their minds. Shit, it’s great. They laugh, and they joke, and even Vincent cracks half a smile. For an hour or two, they aren’t chasing villains across the world, they aren’t fugitives from big corporations, they aren’t anything more than a ragtag almost-family having dinner at – well, having dinner at Dad’s house, really.

Uncle, maybe. Barret’s at least actually a father. Cid wouldn’t adopt these fucking kids if he was paid to do it.

Even Yuffie remembers her manners, and offers to help with the clean-up.

‘I can’t cook,’ she says, ‘but I can clean.’

Shera doesn’t argue with her, just nods and thanks her, and nobody says anything about how Cloud and Tifa had been very quick to jump in and say they’d help. Then she looks at Cid.

‘Can you help me get the camp beds down?’ she asks, ‘it’ll be a squeeze, but we should be able to get everyone in.’

He grunts. ‘Fuck ‘em,’ he says, and snorts at Yuffie’s indignant squawk. ‘Aite, aite, let me smoke first, and I’ll be up.’

He feels more than hears Barret’s witty little retort about being “up,” and he cuts the man a look. Barret raises his eyebrows, like he knows _anything_ about Cid. If he was going to have a sneaky quickie with his not-wife, he certainly wouldn’t do it in the fucking attic of all places. He’d end up putting his foot through one of the panels in the ceiling and he doesn’t much fancy the dust getting places it shouldn’t. Thanks all the same. That’s what the bathroom and the garage are for.

Shaking his head to fight the shudder the thought brings him and pulling a cigarette from his pack, he gets to his feet and heads out the back. Shera hurries after him, and follows him to the far end of the yard.

‘They’re a good bunch,’ she offers, and stands to his right. He’s leaning on the fence, and she looks at him for a second before pulling her sleeves down and hugging herself.

The evening is closing in, and the chill sweeping in from the coast is coming in quickly. How he’s out here with no jacket on, she doesn’t know. But the blue’s a good colour on him; she’d forgotten he owned that t-shirt, since he’s mostly just in black ones these days.

‘They’re pains in my ass,’ he snorts, and inhales deep. ‘But yeah, they’re alright. Buncha numbskulls, thinking they’re going to take on ShinRa and win. It’s why I like ‘em.’

‘They’ve got as much chance as anyone. And someone has to start the fight.’

‘Suppose so,’ he sighs.

They stand there in silence for a moment.

‘What really happened?’ he asks, ‘when ShinRa came back? And don’t fuckin’ lie, telling me that it was alright. You’ve turned the carpet under the table around.’

She flushes deep, fiddles with her cuffs. For a long minute, she doesn’t say anything, and Cid stubs the cigarette out on the fence post, flicks it into the nothingness beyond.

‘Shera, I fuckin’ mean it. Tell me the truth.’

She doesn’t look at him, looks at their feet. He clenches his fists, feels his nails bite into his palms, and then he breathes out, heavy.

‘Did they hurt you?’ he asks.

She licks her lips. Swallows. Doesn’t look at him. ‘No,’ she says.

‘Look me in the goddamn eyes and lie to my face.’

Her gaze flicks up, her eyes wet, red. His stomach turns over, and leftover smoke in his lungs burns bright.

‘Shera,’ he snaps, grabs her arm to yank her around to face him.

Her breath comes as a hot rush of honey across his face as she finally meets his eyes.

‘They tried to,’ she whispers, and exhales hard, bites her lip. ‘A couple of them, they thought – they’ve been watching the house. They were waiting to see if you’d call me, and then when you did, they – they didn’t get close enough to – they didn’t hurt me.’

‘They lay a single finger on you?’ he asks.

She swallows, shrugs, small. Her hand touches his on her arm. His nails dig into the wool, and then loosen, smooth down the sleeve.

‘They – they tried to drag me out, by my hair. I kicked them in the shin. They knocked the table over, it’s why the carpet’s moved. It got twisted, and I put it back the wrong way. I’m sorry, Captain. If I’d paid attention, you wouldn’t have known. I’m sorry.’

‘You fucking apologise one more fucking time,’ he snarls.

Her smile is wobbly, unsure, but it’s there, placating as ever.

‘Shera,’ he says again, and hates this desperation he feels in his chest, because it has no right to be there, ‘you think I’d have been happy not knowing that those fuckers came near you? Fuckin’ stuck with you, ain’t I? Ruined my fuckin’ life for yours, so I gotta make sure you’re keeping it safe, and ain’t no safety if you’re lyin’ to me.’

‘I’m,’ she starts, and then stops, breathes in.

She feels like a black hole, and he stares at her for a moment, completely absorbed in the gravity of her, dragged closer by the sun where her heart should be. Her eyes are galaxies, golden brown and acid green, blended into a hazel he’s never seen in the stars, but they’re red and wet, and shining with the power of a sun. Her nose is freckled, her hair hanging with the soft curl of the day’s wear against her cheek. Her lip is bitten, swollen, and she could be beautiful, if he was inclined to think it. She’s so close he can count her eyelashes, clumped together as they are. He can taste the tea on her breath, hear her heart jumping in her throat.

If he was inclined to think about it, in the same way he could have been inclined to think of her as beautiful, he might realise that he could kiss her. He could kiss her and she wouldn’t say no. She might even kiss him back. But he isn’t inclined to think about it, and his belly doesn’t do a weird, heavy flip-flop that settles low in his hips, too hot and not hot enough. Definitely not.

‘I should have been here,’ he says, which is as close to an apology as she’ll get.

‘If you’d been here, they wouldn’t have been. And I’m glad you called me; I was worried sick something had happened. You’re so far away when you’re out there, and you’ve – you’ve got the _Bronco_ , so it’s not like I’d be able to come to you if you were in trouble. Just please look after yourself, Captain. I couldn’t – I wouldn’t – I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’

‘It ain’t me you should be worrying about,’ he tells her, ‘you ain’t a fighter, ain’t much of anything.’ A little bit insulting, but whatever, it’s true. ‘I bet you ain’t even touched that rifle in the garage.’

She shudders. ‘No, sir.’

He huffs out a breath. ‘Fuckin’ useless. You know they’ll kill you, don’t you? If they think it’ll have any effect on what that bunch of numbskulls are doing, they’ll kill you.’

‘Then it’s a good job it won’t,’ she replies, soft. ‘I’m not their concern, and I wouldn’t be in your way afterwards.’

He almost shouts at her. He doesn’t know what he’d shout, but he almost does. A rude name, probably. But he bites his tongue, and screams inside his mouth instead.

‘You’re a fucking _moron_ ,’ he snaps. ‘You’re a fucking _idiot_.’

And with that he lets go of her and storms off back up the path into the house.

He doesn’t speak to her for the rest of the night, even when everyone else has gone to bed and he’s still up, sat on the porch with a cigarette and a cup of tea, and she comes to sit beside him.

‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ she says, ‘for what I said. I meant no harm.’

‘You’re a great deal of fuckin’ harm, Shera. That’s the problem.’

She fiddles with her fingers, and says nothing.

‘We’re leaving in the morning,’ he says, ‘get started on chasing that fucker Sephiroth down. According to the kid, they heard about some key or something at some old geezer's house in the middle of fuckin' nowhere. Guess we're going there, and then we'll go to the Temple.'

Shera hugs herself again, and comes to squat next to him. She’s got no shoes on now, and her bare toes are ghostly in the shadow of the light coming from the house.

‘Sephiroth,’ she repeats, ‘are the things they say about him true? The things he’s done?’

Cid grunts. ‘From what I’m hearing, he’s worse than the news. The man he was in the war that we met, he ain’t that guy no more.’

They’d only met him briefly; Shera had been new to the mechanics department, and had been working with Cid and his team on one of the planes when the SOLDIERs had come strolling past in that way they have. Some of them had been so young, and Shera had been young herself, and Cid had kicked her in the calf, a soft tap, getting her back on task. It had, in a way, been jealousy, a little bit. He’d been twenty-five, up his own ass with his self-importance. Best pilot in ShinRa, and one of the youngest captains to date, granted so many luxuries by ShinRa. But she’d had her head turned by the SOLDIERs, the way all of them had.

Sephiroth had stopped, thanked the pilots for their tireless efforts. Cid scoffs now, to think of what those tireless efforts were. Shera looks at him.

‘The war wasn’t ours,’ she says, reading his mind. ‘We – you – did as instructed, nothing more.’

‘Doesn’t change the innocent deaths,’ Cid breathes, and stubs his cigarette out.

‘No,’ she agrees. ‘But it is what it is. There’s nothing else to do except make up for it with our actions now. If we can give the Planet her life back, well. That’s something.’

Cid wrinkles his mouth, and then sighs.

‘Suppose. Go to bed, Shera. The girls snore, they’ll keep you awake all night if you don’t go now, and I don’t need you burning breakfast.’

She breathes out a laugh.

‘Yes, Captain. Make sure you get some sleep, too. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you, by the sounds of it.’

He grunts an agreement, and waits until her footsteps have receded before breathing out. He looks at the moon, and she looks back at him. Cold, impartial. He stays out there another half hour, and then quietly locks up. The boys are all in the living room, and he checks on them before making his way to his room, pausing outside the door to listen to the girls. They’re all breathing evenly, snoring. He listens for longer than strictly necessary, and then shuts himself in his bedroom, and lies there staring at the ceiling.


	2. Neon Geometry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid ain't as stupid as he looks, no matter what that robot thinks of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some liberties taken with the exact order of events, but it all happens in the right order. Reminder for language.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Fucking woman had him up at the ass crack of dawn, knocking quietly on his door to let herself in and hassle him about his health and hygiene and diet while he’s travelling, a real busybody right up his ass. He told her to fuck off, and she’d asked, quietly, if he could let her know he was alright just once or twice a week, so she knew he was still alive. The news, she was sure, would only tell her so much. He’d grunted, and dragged his sheets over his head, and agreed to get her to go.

In the grey light before the sun rose properly, she’d been – beautiful was not a word he’d use to describe her, but she’d been otherworldly, pale and open and half-naked, because of course she wouldn’t think to get fucking dressed before barging in on him. She’d been all leg, and arm, and her hair had been loose around her shoulders for once, and she’d been like a – a – he doesn’t know. Siren, whatever. She’d been there and then she’d been gone, and the warmth of the room had gone with her.

He hadn’t been able to go back to sleep after that, so after another half-hour of lying there hating the universe that spat him out, he washes and shaves, for all the good shaving will do him, and then he goes downstairs to find Aerith sat outside with Vincent, looking pensive. It’s, so very early; her hair is loose, hanging in soft waves to her hips, and she’s barefoot – and what _is_ it with these women going barefoot? Do they not realise he hasn’t sanded the decking in years, and it’s going to be splintered to fuck by now? Do they not realise that there’s all sorts living in the grass that’s bothered to grow in the yard? Monsters that don’t really mean any harm, digging underneath the house and shitting everywhere. It’s why he won’t let Shera get a dog. Too much picking up its shit, and he’s had a lifetime of picking up after her messes.

‘What are you doing up?’ he asks, and rifles in his pockets for a lighter.

‘Oh,’ Vincent starts, and Cid snorts, waves the now-found lighter at him.

‘Not you, monster mash,’ he dismisses, ‘I know you don’t sleep. Aerith, I mean.’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she mumbles, fiddles with a stray thread at a buttonhole on her dress. ‘Thinking about – there’s a lot to think about, with Sephiroth and that.’

‘If you’re staying out,’ Vincent says, gesturing at the cigarette in Cid’s hand, ‘I will return indoors. By your leave.’ He nods at Aerith, who gives him a little jiggle of her head, curls bouncing just so, and he swishes off inside, cloak still smelling of damp and stale air.

‘Can’t you get him to wash it?’ Cid asks, and Aerith smiles, pulls at a band on her wrist, gathers her hair into a single bunch at the back of her head.

‘He already has,’ she hums, ‘we’ll get him a new one eventually. When he’s warmed up a bit.’

‘Good luck with that.’

They fall quiet for a minute, and then Aerith asks if he knows how to plait hair.

‘I can do it past my shoulder, but I always struggle with the top bit.’

‘Can’t say it’ll be pretty,’ Cid grunts, ‘but watched you do it enough.’

Twice. He’s watched her do it twice. But his foul mouth does not detract from his intelligence, and the ability to absorb information he receives. Aerith twists, and he shoves the cigarette into the corner of his mouth so he can breathe but have his hands free, and carefully separates out the strands of hair so he can braid it.

As he works, Aerith plays with her dress.

‘Do you think,’ she starts, and then falls quiet again.

‘No,’ Cid replies around the cigarette butt in his teeth, ‘never expect me to do any thinking around here.’

She giggles, more of a sigh than a laugh. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I just – worry.’

‘That I don’t think?’

‘That I’m making things worse.’

He grunts, but the girl doesn’t expand on her concern, and he finishes off the plait, and pats her shoulder for the band to secure it. Aerith is startled, but hands it over.

‘You didn’t have to do it all,’ she mumbles, and he grunts again.

‘Gets it done. You’ve got more time to put your socks on now. No socks at all, I cannot _believe_ the state of you lot. Walking around with nothing on your feet. Raised in barns, all of you.’

She offers him a smile, and runs her fingertips across the plait, before scurrying inside.

Cid pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and frowns at it. Fuck knows what Aerith’s on about, making everything worse. They’re all so fucking young, these kids, out here trying to save the world. He doesn’t often feel _old_ , because he’s not, and it’s not like you’ve got a shorter life expectancy, working for ShinRa. But – these kids, with their death-defying attitudes. They make him feel it.

Fuck it. He needs a cup of tea. It’s too early for existential crises.

* * *

Shera waves them off from the doorstep, and the girls wave, walking backwards to keep waving at her. The boys all offer a wave each, except for Cid, who refuses to look back, hands resolutely in his pockets and teeth gritted tight around a cigarette.

Yuffie, who can somersault and cartwheel on no hands and who can fold her legs behind her head without even trying, trips, falls, and lies there. They stop walking for a second.

‘Y’alright?’ Barret asks, and Tifa gives Yuffie a hand back onto her feet.

‘Yeah, yeah, just – my feet, they get in the way,’ Yuffie shakes them off, and turns to face the right direction as she moves this time, bounding ahead like there’s nothing wrong. ‘C’mon then, gang! Let’s get going!’

They’re heading to that old geezer’s place, down on the edge of the continent. It’s a long haul, and it involves getting back on the _Bronco_ , which is all well and good, but fuck if Cid can tolerate Yuffie’s whining about motion sickness every ten minutes.

‘This better be worth it,’ Cid says, two hours into their journey down the river.

Tifa and Aerith are on one of the wings, minding their goddamn business, even if Aerith does have her dress halfway up her legs and every now and then he catches a pale thigh out of the corner of his eye when he checks he’s not about to steer them into a fucking cliff, and these children are doing nothing for his blood pressure. This isn’t to say he’s _looking_ at them, but they really aren’t making themselves very subtle.

‘It will be,’ Cloud assures him, nodding hard. ‘The weapon’s seller has the keystone, it’s what they said in Gongaga. He has the door to the Temple, and it’s on the way.’

‘The _Bronco_ ain’t gonna get over the water,’ Cid says, because it won’t.

With all their lumbering asses aboard, it’s barely surviving shallow water. Fucking boat indeed.

‘We’ll find a way.’

And that’s that, then. Cloud is sure they’ll find a way, so they’ll find a fucking way.

* * *

Five hours in, and they pull to a stop. There’s a waterfall in an oxbow in the river, and it’s – it’s cold. Vincent stands, and looks at it. The girls – Yuffie now, too, is aboard the wing, and lying there staring at the sky seems to help the motion sickness, apparently. (That, and the tranquilizers.) – sit up and look at him, then at the waterfall.

‘What is it?’ Cloud asks.

Barret and Cid look at each other; both of them have on their faces an acknowledgement that they are too old for this.

‘I – I don’t know,’ Vincent says, quiet. His fingers are twitching, as if tapping out a tune against the air. ‘There is – there is something there.’

Aerith carefully gets to her feet, and holding out her hands to steady herself, closes her eyes, tilts her head. She’s listening, and her nose wrinkles.

‘I don’t understand,’ she whispers, and she leans a little. Tifa rests a hand on her ankle, steadies her. ‘I can’t – oh!’

She flinches, rears back. Brushing sun-dump hair from her face, she looks back at Vincent, and her eyes are sad.

‘I couldn’t hear a lot,’ she says, ‘there’s too much noise. I think there’s a – there’s Mako, in there. It’s crying, there’s a lot of sadness. But I _could_ hear your name. Whatever is in there, it wants you.’

Vincent frowns, and uncharacteristically fiddles with his cloak, pulls it higher about his face.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ he murmurs.

‘Well, we ain’t finding out yet,’ Cid grunts, ‘with all your fat asses aboard, I ain’t getting close to it.’

Barret snorts. ‘Who you callin’ a fat ass? I saw how much bread you ate.’

‘Motherfucker, I know good bread when I eat it.’

‘I can’t let you swim it,’ Cloud says, and doesn’t say it’s because he doesn’t really know how to swim.

Vincent looks at Cloud like he’s about to throw up, or throw something.

‘I wasn’t intending to,’ he says, and casts another look at the cave.

‘Perhaps we should stop for lunch,’ Tifa suggests. ‘We could all do with stretching our legs a little, don’t you think?’

So Cid pulls them up onto a beach, and the girls put together a makeshift lunch of noodles and soup and fresh fruit. Cid pulls his goggles down and naps under the wing of the _Bronco_ , because it’s shady, and piloting the biplane with nine bodies aboard is harder than he would have thought. Yuffie comes and sits next to him, tells him she isn’t hungry, and rests her head on his shoulder. He rolls his eyes beneath his goggles, and pats her leg sympathetically. She must think he’s blind.

* * *

It’s mid-afternoon by the time they pull up next to an inexplicably positioned house on an inexplicably lonely cliff. There’s _no reason_ that Cid can see for a house to be here. He parks the _Bronco_ and they dismount, and they stare at the house.

Cid takes a breath.

‘Don’t even start,’ Barret says.

So Yuffie exhales for him and says, ‘Gongaga is _right there_.’

‘We had a lot going on,’ Cloud says, which is a diplomatic way of saying, “we forgot.”

Cid looks across the horizon at Gongaga, a ruin in the far distance. He looks at this lonely house. They’d spoken, a little, of all the shit that had gone on immediately prior to stealing his plane, but he doesn’t quite understand _how_ exactly they managed to forget to visit this lonely little house on a lonely cliff when it’s visible from the fucking town. Whatever, what does he care, it’s not his business.

‘Fucker better have the key,’ he grunts, and starts the trudge up the hill to the door.

Aerith rushes past him to knock on the door.

‘Hi,’ she says, when it opens.

‘Customers?’ the man asks.

Aerith blinks, looks at Cid, who curls a lip, and further back, to Cloud, who raises an eyebrow.

‘Uh,’ she says, ‘we heard you, uh – we heard you have the Keystone, for the Temple.’

‘You too, huh,’ the man says, and steps aside. ‘You’d better come in.’

They all cluster inside the house – a weapon’s shop, though there’s nothing there they can really make use of. By his own admission, the seller hasn’t been able to forge anything due to a shortage of materials. They promise to look out for some, and to drop it by if they get chance. This vague promise nearly gives Cid a hernia; it’ll be him taking time out of his fucking day to cart everyone back and forth to ship the materials in.

‘You guys take years off my life,’ he huffs, under his breath, busying himself in looking at a spear on the wall. It’s only iron, with less materia slots than he has now. Hell, it’s barely better than the one he made himself that he started this mess with.

Ultimately, their trip is – well, it’s not wasted. They’ve got information that they needed, and wouldn’t have been able to progress without, but for fuck sake.

The guy’s a joker, thinks the whole thing’s a massive laugh.

‘You… sold it?’ Cloud asks, and Aerith’s jaw drops.

‘Worthless to me,’ the seller shrugs, and fiddles with some things on the side. ‘I mean, it’s fun to joke around, but I gotta pay my bills, you know. The Temple ain’t got nothing worth holding onto in it. I mean, if you believe it, it’s got ultimate destructive magic buried deep inside, but even then – it’s not worth the Gil Dio paid me to have it in his museum.’

‘Dio,’ Barret scowls.

‘Dio?’

‘The big man at the Saucer,’ Yuffie explains. She’s hovering very close to Cid’s side, and he pretends like he doesn’t notice that he’s the furthest point away from Vincent. ‘He’s the one that chucked us in jail, because Barret has a gunarm, but it was actually his best friend from his home town, who’d gone totally loopy fruit, and shot the place up like a parade.’

‘Yuffie,’ Tifa chides, and Yuffie’s ears go pink. She scuffs her feet, pops her fingers.

‘Sorry.’

Cid rolls his eyes, elbows her.

‘Being an adult means keeping your trap shut,’ he tells her, quietly.

She purses her lips. ‘Then I won’t be an adult,’ she replies.

‘So we need to go back to the Saucer,’ Cloud says, and frowns. ‘Well, okay. Thank you, for your time, then. If we find any supplies, we’ll bring them by.’

‘Fat fucking chance,’ Cid breathes, and scratches his nose when Cloud looks at him.

Innocent until proven guilty, thanks all the same.

* * *

It’s late when they get to the Gold Saucer. They’ve had to go through Corel again, and the tram is – well, Cid’s not a fan. It’s late, but the place is still loud as fuck, and Cid has a headache from the lights before they’ve even got through the door.

‘I’m tired!’ Yuffie announces.

‘Yeah,’ Tifa agrees, ‘we’ve moved a lot in a day.’

They’ve done not a thing except move, and Cid’s eyes are burning with the effort of keeping them up.

‘I’m gonna go and see Dio,’ Cloud says, standing bold as brass in the middle of the Terminal Floor, looking at Battle Square.

‘I’m going to fucking bed,’ Cid replies.

The truth is, he’s not going to get to go to bed for another few hours yet; Cloud is going to go to Battle Square, Tifa and Aerith and Barret are going to follow him, and they’re going to chat shit with Dio and get the Keystone. Yuffie is going to make herself sick on candy. Cait Sith will be – well, he’ll be wherever the fuck he is. Vincent will go and mope with the ghosts in the corner at the hotel, and Cid will just be expected to sit up and wait for them all to come back like their overprotective father.

‘Fucking joke,’ he says, and goes to what is temporarily _his_ room.

He dumps his pack on the bed, doesn’t dare sit down in the event he falls down, and fishes out his PHS. Shera had only asked for one or two calls a week, but – well, she’ll either send him to sleep through boredom or wake him up through anger.

‘Hello?’ comes her voice, and his lips twitch.

‘It’s only me,’ he says, ‘doing as you fuckin’ asked, so you ain’t got no reason to get all uppity this time.’

She snorts. ‘I never get uppity,’ she says, ‘I get worried. There’s a difference, I understand that you don’t always recognise it. It sounds noisy, where are you?’

‘Gold Saucer. Apparently the Keystone we need for the Temple of the Ancients is here. The owner has it, or some shit. Cloud’s gone to find it.’

He goes to the window of the hotel and looks out. It’s almost a nice view.

‘You’ve not gone with him?’

‘I’ve had to put up with all of them for a whole day. This is the first privacy I’ve had, I’m taking it.’

‘I should have packed you a magazine,’ Shera hums, ‘instead of that book.’

‘Book? Magazine? Fuck you on about, woman?’

She laughs then. ‘You sound tired, Captain, maybe you should get some rest.’

‘If I go to sleep now, God knows they’ll need my help the minute I put my head down. Can’t leave them alone for ten minutes, these kids.’

‘I thought you didn’t like kids.’

‘Can’t fucking stand them,’ he agrees, in the kind of way that shows you don’t really mean it. Much.

Shera is quiet for a moment, and Cid looks out of the window some more.

‘Hey,’ he says, and then hesitates. ‘It’s your birthday soon.’

‘It is.’

‘No need to sound so surprised, fucking hell. I do pay attention to shit on the calendar.’

‘You’ve missed three doctor’s appointments and four routine checkups.’

‘I didn’t miss them, I avoided them. Not that I expect you to recognise the difference.’

He hears her incline, proverbial tip of the hat. Touché.

‘Anyway. I was thinking. Maybe when this has all blown over, maybe we could come here. For your birthday, I mean. You like all this neon shit.’

Shera’s smile is audible in the way she sighs.

‘I’d like that,’ she says, ‘I do like all that neon shit.’

(She doesn’t, not really. She likes people, and she likes being busy, and most importantly, she likes spending time with the Captain, so if that means “neon shit,” well, that’s what she likes.)

He very nearly says, “then it’s a date,” but he manages to catch himself before he does something _that_ stupid.

‘I’ll make it happen,’ he says instead, which is a lot safer.

Cloud’s commentary comes back to haunt him, again. Fuck him.

* * *

In the end, Cid holds out until Cloud gets back from the Battle Square, Keystone in hand. He starts explaining everything, catching everybody up onto the same page, and Cid tries, really he does. Under all the bluster about not giving a shit, he knows he needs to pay attention, needs to understand what exactly it is he’s meant to be doing by having thrown his lot in with this ragtag bunch of numbskulls. He knows this, and he tries. It’s just –

Cloud talks so _slowly_ , like he doesn’t know what to say, and before he knows it, he’s drifting off, asleep before they’ve got to the shit he _doesn’t_ know. Vincent shakes him awake, hand on his shoulder.

‘Cid,’ he says, ‘hey, it’s late. Time to go to bed, old man.’

‘Ain’t an old man, go fuck yourself, _grandad_ ,’ Cid snorts back, but accepts the hand Vincent offers to pull him out of the ghost-cold chair.

Vincent rolls his eyes, and lets go to let Cid make his way upstairs.

Cid manages to get out of his trousers, and his jacket, and throttle himself with his scarf, then collapses face-first in his bed, in his t-shirt and boxers and socks, goggles still on his head. Vincent carefully puts the pilot’s pack on the floor and yanks the covers loose to toss them over him. Red, at the far end of the room and curled into a ball by the unlit fire, looks up.

‘He’s getting old,’ Vincent says.

‘Fuck you,’ Cid grunts.

Vincent snorts, and leaves him to it.

* * *

In the morning, they meet in the dining hall for breakfast, showered, dressed, ready for the day, and Aerith looks.

Perturbed, maybe.

Tifa looks like her nose is out of joint. Barret eyeballs him over toast, makes a gesture in expression alone that tells Cid to stay the fuck out of it. Which is fine by Cid, love quarrels among children are not his problem. Yuffie is enough to be getting on with.

‘So we’re heading for the Temple of the Ancients,’ Cloud says, to break the atmosphere. ‘It should be a straight shot, I had a look at the map last night, the water looks shallow enough for the _Bronco_.’

‘I hope so,’ Cid grunts, and makes a cup of tea.

He feels a little more confident about the milk today, and it’s almost drinkable. Hurrah.

‘Who’s going in?’ Cloud asks.

‘You, obviously,’ Yuffie replies. ‘And like. Aerith’s an Ancient, right? She should go to the Temple of the Ancients.’

‘Obviously,’ Vincent echoes, and it’s almost not sarcastic at all.

‘Well,’ Cloud hums, and his foot kicks against his chair leg.

‘Oh, fuck sake,’ Barret grunts, ‘we’ll just draw straws.’

‘Count me out,’ Yuffie huffs, ‘we’re going to be going across the water again, I don’t want to be running around no stinky temple after _that_. So count me out.’

Shaking their heads, they finish up breakfast and get on their way.

* * *

The Keystone is missing. It’s missing, and Cloud is searching his pockets, and his pack, and Aerith’s pack, and then everyone’s emptying their shit all over the sand just to make sure they haven’t accidentally picked it up or that Cloud’s not put it in there by accident.

‘Where is it?’ he asks, desperate. ‘I had it! I had it _last night_!’

Aerith very, very slowly looks up, and Cid does _not_ want to know how she knows what’s about to come out of her mouth.

‘Cait,’ she says, softly.

The entire party stop, and they don’t hold their breath, but the air goes very still. And if it was possible, the robot would try and shrink into himself.

‘Yes?’ he says.

‘We saw you,’ she says, ‘last night, at the Saucer. You were – sneaking. You kept looking over your shoulder, like you didn’t want to be seen.’

Cait shuffles. ‘Well,’ he starts, but Barret’s already on his feet.

‘The fuck?’ he demands. ‘The _fuck_ have you done?’

Cid looks at Vincent. Vincent looks at Cid. They very carefully put the things in their hands down, slowly, so as to not draw attention.

Yuffie’s brain works in amazing ways, and Cid is sure he’ll live his whole life never being able to predict where her thoughts will take her.

‘You’re the traitor,’ she says, on her feet and pointing wildly. ‘You sold us out to ShinRa! What did you do, cat? Take the Keystone when Cloud wasn’t there?’

‘Why the fuck wouldn’t he have it with him?’ Barret asks, and Cloud’s ears go red.

‘I thought it was safe in my pack,’ he says, ‘I can’t carry _everything_ with me all the time.’

‘But the _Keystone_?’ Barret demands, and his fist clenches. ‘The one fucking thing we have to maybe _stop_ Sephiroth! Too busy getting your – ‘

‘Barret!’ Tifa snaps, ‘enough! Cait, what did you _do_? Please.’

‘I gave it to Tseng,’ he says, quickly, with a crackle, because the words are coming out too fast. ‘I’m sorry, you know I’m a robot. I’m just a guy controlling it from afar.’

‘What sort of guy?’ Aerith asks, ‘who are you?’

‘I work for ShinRa.’

Cid grabs Barret’s arm, surprising them both with how quickly he moves to do so.

‘Leave it,’ he says, ‘leave it.’

‘And I.’ If it was possible, Cait would look embarrassed, by the tone of his voice. ‘I didn’t want to, but you know ShinRa, you know what they expect. I had to take precautions in the event of a – in case I was discovered.’

And then he plays the audio. Cid doesn’t know the voice, but he hears the call of names, he hears a girl, a _little_ girl, and she’s calling for her Papa, and before he knows what exactly is happening, he’s digging his heels in, and Vincent has Barret’s other arm, and _he’s_ digging his heels in, and they are having to fight to hold the rebel back. He’s got a quick temper, but this is his _child_ , his _baby girl_ , and ShinRa have her, as a _hostage_ , because of this jumped-up little shitstain pretending to be a toy.

‘Fucking _idiot_ ,’ Cid spits.

‘You are a _fool_ ,’ Vincent adds.

‘Dickhead!’ Yuffie howls.

‘Cait, _why_?’ from Aerith, not angry, just disappointed, like she’s not part of why the Keystone was able to be taken in the first place.

‘What can you do?’ Cait asks. ‘Kill me? I’m a toy. It won’t do you any good.’

‘Wanna fuckin’ bet?’ Barret roars. ‘You fucking _wait_ , you just watch me! I’ll make you _wish_ you had a real body, you absolute fuckin’ – ‘

‘Barret!’ Tifa, again, white-faced and with shaking knuckles. ‘Barret, it’s not helping! It’s not! Listen to me. Marlene is with them. But she will be safe. They aren’t stupid.’

‘Exactly!’ Cait agrees, overly enthusiastic. ‘She’s perfectly safe! Nothing will happen to her, as long as we all cooperate!’

‘You think we’re cooperating with you!’ Yuffie shrieks. ‘After you take a _child_ hostage! You forget who I am! What I lived through! You’re stupid! You’re idiots! He’s going to find out who you are, and he’s going to kill you!’

‘But first, we need to stop Sephiroth,’ Cait says.

Aerith is fiddling with her fingers. ‘We can’t, now,’ she says, ‘you took the only way of getting into the Temple from us.’

Cait tips his head. ‘We aren’t stupid, as Tifa says. The Turks are already on their way to the Temple.’

‘Then we might as well just deliver it to Sephiroth!’ Barret snarls, ‘they’re fucking _useless_. We stopped them at every turn!’

‘Do you even know where you’re going?’ Cait asks, like he has _any_ leverage.

‘Down south,’ Cid says, ‘it’s far off the continent. Shera an’ me, we seen the maps.’

Cait turns to him. ‘Maps change. The land changes.’

‘It’s a fucking island, it can’t move.’

‘You think they put the _right place_ on the map? I always had respect for you, Cid, such a talented pilot. But your brain got addled by all those cigarettes, I think.’

‘I know your voice,’ he replies. ‘I _know_ it, I know you.’

‘Doubtful, but you’re welcome to try. My point is, guys, you have to take me with you. I – I have been a bad friend.’

‘Friend!’ they shriek at varying volumes.

Barret tries one last effort to shake the boys off him, and then gives up.

‘Some fucking friend,’ he grunts, and sits down.

Cautiously, they let go of him, but he doesn’t make any move.

‘Well, the point is, I’ve been a bad friend. So let me make it up to you,’ Cait says. ‘I’ll take you to the Temple, before the Captain gets you all lost, and we’ll meet with the Turks, and we’ll get the Keystone back. We’ll stop Sephiroth getting it.’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ Cloud says, with the most possible resentment he’s able to muster.

‘Then looks like I’m staying in the party!’ Cait says.

Like they’re fucking happy about it.

Cid and Vincent look at each other, and agree, without words, that Barret is not to be alone with the robot.

* * *

In typical, _typical_ Lifestream-mocking, ha-ha-ha let’s all have a good old laugh at you kind of way, Cid pulls the short straw.

As if piloting them across the fucking sea wasn’t bad enough, now he’s got to deal with – with –

Whatever this shit is, it doesn’t make _sense_. Doorways lead where doorways don’t go, he looked out of a window and saw _snow_. Aerith is utterly unphased, Cloud looks concerned but follows her lead. But of course Aerith, the girl who stands on the edge of a wing above a spinning propeller, and listens to _voices in her head_ , of course she’s not bothered by this.

‘The fuck we even here for?’ Cid asks, and then springs backwards to avoid the sharp pointy bits of a Kelzmelzer skittering down the wall to attack them.

‘The weapon seller talked about Ultimate Destructive Magic,’ Cloud says, drawing his sword, ‘and we know Sephiroth’s after the Black Materia. It doesn’t take a genius to – whoops, sorry Aerith, almost got you then – to put it together.’

Cid rolls out of the way of a second Kelzmelzer, and Aerith flings a casual Fire2 at it, offering him a smile when he gives her a thanks.

‘No shit,’ he says, to Cloud, who’s wrenching his sword free of the exoskeleton of the monster, ‘but _why_.’

Cloud gives him a withering look. Aerith lays a hand on his arm.

‘We just need to stop Sephiroth getting it,’ she says, ‘that’s all. It’s a messy place, but we have to do it.’

They keep going, and the more puzzles they solve, the more apparent it becomes that they – that they –

‘I’m sure this corridor was wider,’ Cid says, and nearly wedges his spear holding it horizontal. ‘I was carrying this on my shoulder the way in. It doesn’t fit now.’

‘You were holding it long-wise,’ Cloud says.

Long-wise. Sometimes, the kid is almost sweet.

‘Nope, hung my other arm over it, because I’m a lazy old bastard and I like to be in really uncomfortable positions when I’m walking through doorways that make no sense,’ Cid replies. ‘The place is shrinking.’

Aerith purses her lips.

‘Maybe that’s what the scripture meant,’ she says. ‘It talked about replacement, but I didn’t know what it meant. I think – maybe – maybe to get the Black Materia, the Temple has to be – replaced.’

‘They swap places?’ Cloud asks.

‘Maybe. I’m not very good at reading the walls.’

She’s not very good at reading the room either, from what Cid’s heard about her brazen way of addressing issues. But that’s probably on the mean side and he likes Aerith, he does.

‘We’ll work it out.’

In the end, they switch out for Cait Sith, because it soon becomes quite clear that if they stay in the Temple, they are going to get _killed_. Cait is a robot, and he offers his body to the Temple to get them the Materia. Nobody tries to stop him. He’s a robot, and he’s an annoying one at that. His voice has gotten on Cid’s last nerve for _days_ , and he’s only been in the party for less than a week.

Besides which, he’s a fucking spy and a kidnapper. Fuck him.

‘Go on, then,’ Cid says, and shoves his spear into the dirt at an angle to perch on it. ‘Go wild. Yer not having my materia though, go fuck yourself.’

Cait gives him a look, as much as a robotic cat can give anyone a look, and then turns the moogle around and off he bounces, disappearing into the Temple.

A rumble, a rattle, and then a horrific screech, and the Temple is. Gone.

They sit there and they stare at it.

‘Goodbye,’ Yuffie offers, sounding almost sincere.

Vincent looks at her, almost amused. Her cheeks are a little pink, and she turns her attention to a very interesting bug on the stone next to her.

‘Is the materia there?’ Barret asks.

Cloud climbs down into the rubble, Aerith quick to follow him.

‘Yeah,’ he calls up.

Barret and Tifa follow them to the edge of the pit where the Temple had once stood. They stand there and stare.

Cid moves off the spear and sits on a rock, leans back on his elbows and crosses his ankles. They’ll be chatting shit for ages now, no doubt, the way that they always do. It’ll filter through to the rest of them eventually.

‘I can’t _believe_ Cait Sith was a traitor,’ Yuffie says.

‘Why are you surprised?’ Red asks her, and settles by her feet. ‘Everyone in this world, some way or another, is not who we think.’

Daddy issues, Cid thinks, if he’d listened to Yuffie enough to get the gist of everything that happened in Cosmo Canyon.

‘We’d best keep a lookout,’ Vincent says, and Cid snorts.

‘Speak for yourself, I’m taking five.’

‘The Temple’s destruction will have garnered the interest of the monsters in the area. They will come investigate.’

‘Then fight them,’ Cid tells him, and pulls his goggles down to reflect the glare of the sun. ‘I done my day’s work.’

‘There is more to a day than just one job,’ Vincent says, and Cid snorts.

‘A good man’s work is never done,’ Yuffie adds, and it sounds like an awful fortune cookie note.

‘Then it’s a good job I’m a rotten bastard,’ Cid replies, and that’s the end of that.

They sit there in silence for a few minutes; Cloud and Tifa are talking, their voices drifting over in low undertones, and it’s nice to know they’re there. Monsters skitter in the shadows, keeping their distance, not sure what to make of the disturbance. Yuffie is humming to herself, rubbing a potion into bruises down her legs; planet only knows what she’d managed to trip over while they’d been in the Temple.

Cid pulls out his PHS and cycles through the contacts, hovers over Shera’s. He’s already called her once. He doesn’t need to call her again. She’d only asked for one or two calls a week.

‘Hey, guys,’ comes a voice, and Cid grinds his teeth so hard it’s a wonder they don’t break.

‘Fuck off,’ he and Yuffie say at the same time.

‘Cloud!’ Tifa screams, and nobody really knows what to do for a second.

Barret starts shooting, and then they’re all moving, Cid yanking his spear from the dirt and springboarding off a rock to get up onto the wall, Yuffie quick to follow, using Vincent as a springboard, because that’s _fair_.

Poor bastard, good job he’s a rock.

‘Sephiroth!’ she gasps, and he has to grab her shirt to keep her on the wall.

‘Motherfucker!’ he snarls.

Cloud is – Cloud is _down_. He’s on the floor, having – is he having a _seizure_? What the _fuck_ is going on? Aerith is trying her best to get to him, but it seems like she’s being stopped by something. Tifa is making her way down. Sephiroth is spouting some bullshit, the way Sephiroth is _always_ spouting bullshit.

‘I’m gonna kill him,’ Barret is snarling, but he doesn’t dare shoot, there’s three innocents down there in the pit.

Cid spins the spear in his hand, holds it up, angles it. He could jump, he’s got good aim. Vincent appears on the wall the other side of the pit, gun aimed, ready.

‘Yuffie,’ Cid whispers.

‘I’m not going to jump down there,’ she whispers back, ‘I want to. Trust me, I would. But I don’t – something’s not right.’

No, something _isn’t_ right.

They stand there, ready to fight, Barret and Red pacing back and forth, and Vincent scans the skies, ready for something else to come at them. Cid spares the sky a glance, but he knows the sky, he _breathes_ the air. He’ll know if something comes their way.

And then –

And _fucking then_ –

Cloud crawls to his feet, still twitchy and out of himself, wrong, not-right. Aerith and Tifa, held by something they can’t get past, call his name.

And then he hands Sephiroth the Black Materia.

What. The. _Fuck_?

‘Cloud!’ Tifa hollers, and then the kid’s down again, a bag of bricks, and he’ll feel the weight of her fist in his face for _weeks_.

Then Sephiroth’s gone, and everything is. It’s over. It’s done.

‘Fuck,’ Yuffie breathes, and Cid remembers that breathing is something he should probably do, too.

‘Fuck,’ he agrees.

* * *

They go to Gongaga, the closest place where they can rest safely. Cloud is still twitchy and out of it. It’s like he’s woken from a nightmare, his memory hazy. Aerith had been quick to assure him that it wasn’t his fault, and he’s folded into her, which had upset Tifa, but Cid doesn’t have the patience to try and untangle all that shit.

Instead, he goes to the edge of town under pretence of smoking, and he calls Shera.

‘This is fucked up,’ he says, by way of greeting.

There’s a slosh of water; she’s in the bath.

‘You don’t have to answer if you’re busy,’ he tells her.

‘I just worry that it’s going to be one of your friends, telling me you’re dead,’ she replies. ‘But it’s you, so it’s fine. What’s fucked up?’

‘Everything,’ he breathes, and lights a cigarette, sits with his legs dangling into the pit. ‘We – we made it to the Temple, after that fucking robot stole it, and then we get – so we’re after the Black Materia, right, to stop Sephiroth getting his dirty little mitts on it, and then out of fucking nowhere, guess who shows up?’

She takes a breath. ‘You’re not _serious_?’

He laughs, but it’s bitter. ‘As a fuckin’ grave, Shera. He shows up and Cloud just – hands it over. All fucked up, like, obviously some head shit’s going on. But fuck me, I thought losing the rocket was bad.’

‘I’m sorry for that.’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

She shuts the fuck up, and they sit in silence for a minute. He takes a few drags of his cigarette.

‘We’ve got to get it back,’ he says.

‘And you will.’

‘I know who the robot is,’ he says, ‘Cait, I mean. I can’t remember his name. He works in ShinRa. One of the nice ones. For all the fucking good nice is these days, dirty stinking bastard, selling us out. Fucking _asshole_.’

Shera considers this for a moment.

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ she says, ‘the girls at the offices like talking to me, they might be able to find something out?’

She says it like a question, like she’s asking permission.

‘Do not get yourself involved,’ he snaps. ‘You will get yourself fucking killed. They’ve taken Barret’s daughter, probably killed Aerith’s mum. Shit, Shera. Don’t get yourself mixed up in it.’

‘They’ve taken his daughter?’ she asks, breathless. ‘What do you mean his _daughter_?’

‘ _Don’t get involved_ ,’ he repeats, harder. ‘You aren’t going to be able to march in there and take her back, don’t be fucking stupid.’

‘I’m not going to!’ she replies, hastily, and he knows that. ‘I just – Captain, it’s not _right_!’

‘I know it’s not! It’s fucked up!’

She breathes for a second, and the water sloshes. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, and he thinks it must be getting cold, and not because he’s thinking about her legs, what they look like in the water, between bubbles, because the bottle of whatever that smelly shit is has to be hers, he doesn’t have a bath, he showers like a normal human being.

‘Please stay safe,’ she whispers. ‘Please come home.’

‘I ain’t dying yet,’ he says, ‘we’ll get Marlene back, and we’ll kill Sephiroth, and we’ll save the planet. Don’t worry about me.’

‘He’s got the Black Materia.’

‘And we’ll sort it, fuck sake.’

She sighs.

‘Where are you going next?’ she asks.

‘Aerith said that the materia needs a lot of energy to make it work, one person alone can’t use it. She thinks Sephiroth will go to where there’s a high concentration of energy.’

‘Mako,’ Shera agrees, ‘that’s on the surface. But he can’t use a reactor, it’s not healthy.’

‘The lifestream comes to the surface to heal wounds. What’s the biggest wound we know?’

She huffs out half a laugh. ‘The crater.’

‘Yeah.’

He’s about to say more, but something rustles in the trees beside him, and he leaps a mile, hand reaching for his spear, but – it’s still at the inn, resting against the wall. He’s unarmed. Fuck it, he can punch something. And he nearly does, until Yuffie appears out of nowhere.

‘Cid!’ she shrieks, ‘Cid, have you seen her?’

‘What? Who?’

‘Cid?’ Shera asks, but the PHS is far from his ear.

‘It’s Aerith!’ Yuffie shrieks, and he wishes she wouldn’t. ‘She’s _gone_! She went outside for some air, and now she’s _gone_. She’s left her pack, and her PHS.’

‘The fuck? She can’t have gone far! Fuck – we’ll find her.’

Without saying goodbye, he hangs up on Shera, and then he’s legging it back to the inn to grab his spear, and leaving Tifa and Barret with the shivering, unconscious Cloud, he yells at Vincent and Yuffie and Red and Cait, all of them, fuck it, just spread out, find her.

She can’t have gone far, not yet.

But they all go three miles out, and she’s _nowhere_. Cid nearly spears Yuffie when they close in on each other, and she bounces off the spear, throws her shuriken into the floor at his feet.

‘Fucking _hell_ ,’ he sighs, and she lands on her ass.

‘She’s _gone_.’

‘She’s gone after him by herself,’ Vincent says, appearing from fucking nowhere, and Cid wants to know how they do it. ‘Sephiroth. She’s determined to take him on, use the Promised Land against him.’

‘How do you know that?’ Cid demands.

‘Because I pay attention,’ Vincent snorts. ‘If you listen to her when she talks, she was planning this. She was always intending to be the one to take Sephiroth on. She’s the last Cetra, she thinks it’s her duty.’

‘It’s going to get her killed,’ Yuffie whispers.

‘She’s going to get us all killed,’ Cid corrects, ‘if we don’t get to her first. We’d better hurry back, let Cloud know. We’re going to have to move fast if we want to beat her there.’

‘Where?’ Yuffie asks.

‘The Crater.’


	3. Dinner Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rocket is built.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: s. harrassment. If you don't want to read it, look for the line beginning "He's not. He's talking about her." It has brackets. Then skip to the next line break. It's mentioned in passing later, but not in detail.
> 
> Also a warning for violence. Rest in fuckin piss.
> 
> As always, enjoy my lovelies~! I'm really enjoying writing this so much, good lord.

The date of the launch is confirmed. April 12th. They’re going to fucking _space_. When he puts the phone down, he starts to laugh, and he can’t stop.

‘Captain?’ Shera asks, ‘you alright?’

‘We’re launching! Shera, we’ve got the go-ahead! Fucking hell! We’ve got the go-ahead!’

She pauses for a second, digesting this information, and then she laughs, and if they were different people, he’d have picked her up and span her round. Hell, in another world, he’d have kissed her, and that would have been the end of that whole debacle. But that’s another world, and other people. Instead, they laugh, and they laugh, and Shera puts the kettle on.

A few hours pass, and the phone rings again. At this point, Rocket Town is a shanty town, shipped-in pre-fabs ShinRa have gifted to the rocket crew, so that they don’t have to travel so far every day, but have more comfort than sleeping in tents. They’ve got basic amenities, but it’s nothing compared to Midgar, not even the slums. But it does them well. Once a week, Shera collects up the laundry the crew have accumulated and takes it to the machines to wash, and she does the week’s groceries while she’s there. It works out alright.

‘Get that for me, would ya?’ Cid calls, because he’s under the car, fixing a pipe he knocked driving like an asshole over the plains, because it had been raining, and he hadn’t wanted to wait for Shera to wait it out to bring the tea bags back.

‘Course, Captain.’

He can’t hear her, she’s always so bloody quiet, but he doesn’t always need to hear. He likes knowing that she’s close, is all. Likes knowing that she’s there.

‘Yes, sir. Yes, of course. I’ll let him know. Yes, sir.’

Louder now, her voice sounds strained. Palmer, then. Fuck Palmer. Boss or not, fuck Palmer. A click, and then the shuffle of her feet.

‘Pull us out,’ he says, and she grabs a trouser leg, pulls until he’s free of the underside of the car. ‘What’s the tub of lard want now?’

‘We’ve been invited to a press conference,’ she says, ‘because they’ve announced the date, they’re getting all the reporters in. Making a big thing of it. Dinner and fizz and those little foods they carry on trays.’

‘Canapes,’ Cid grunts. ‘Waste of time. Give me a proper meal any day. You can’t get full on canapes.’

‘What if it’s bread?’ she asks.

‘It’s never bread. Us?’

‘You and I,’ she says, ‘he said you have to be there, obviously, being the best pilot in ShinRa, and he said he wanted me there, as – what did he call it? – an integral part of the team.’

Cid snorts, and wipes his hands off on a rag, getting to his feet and shaking a cigarette free of the pack in his pocket. ‘Bullshit, he wants to look at your tits.’

Shera automatically adjusts her coat, thick and fleece-lined for the chill, and holds her arms a little more forward than normal.

‘Don’t stress,’ he assures her, pats her arm, ‘if Scarlet’s there, she’ll have hers out, ain’t no competing with her.’

‘I wouldn’t want to, anyway,’ Shera says, ‘I haven’t got the kind of dress for that kind of event.’

‘Do I look like the kind of guy that owns a suit?’ he chortles. ‘Don’t panic about it. Go in yer scrubs.’

Shera absolutely refuses to go in her scrubs, and refuses to explain to him why the idea of doing so is so abhorrent.

Women!

* * *

They have a couple of days to make sure all the grease is gone from under their nails, and then they have to mosey on over to ShinRa HQ, flashing their IDs and looking _presentable_ to the media. Fucking circus, Cid grunts, but obligingly agrees to pretend to not be a savage.

‘We’re getting a proper fucking meal afterwards,’ he says, in the way most men severely underestimate how long they’re going to be at a social function.

‘Yes,’ Shera agrees, because she knows better, but she’s getting to spend time with him, away from the grease and the grime of the rocket, and away from the other crewmen, and that’s probably wrong of her, but what’s the harm?

So she goes into town, by his leave, the day before, and she picks him up a suit, and she spends half the day panicking about a dress. He’s easy to buy for; he’d taken a nap, a week earlier, in the sun, and she’d carefully twisted the neckline of his overalls, got the measurements from it, and she’d used those to get a suit for him. (It fits him like a glove.)

The dress, though! She hates dressing up, it’s not her bag. Hair and makeup and heeled shoes.

She finds the least horrible looking ones, and gets them in her size, doesn’t even try them on, because she’s in boots and heavy-duty socks, and she’s going to have to shave her legs for this, isn’t she?

Finally giving up and just getting a dress that fits and doesn’t make her look like hot vomit, she packs up and takes it all back to the rocket. Cid isn’t at home, so she leaves the suit in a bag on his door.

* * *

The first time Shera meets Cid, he’s half-naked, upside down in too-tight trousers, a screwdriver between his teeth, and his arms are shaking with the effort of trying to undo a bolt on a prototype. Why he had to be upside down, she never finds out, but she stands there blinking at him, pack on her shoulder, and watches all the other boys standing there doing – well, doing nothing.

She watches him for a second, and then she dumps her pack, shoulders past one of the boys, grabbing a wrench from his belt, and picks her way across cables and bits of metal, climbing into the scaffolding. Carefully, she takes the Captian’s hands away from the bolt, ignoring the startled curses, and rears back, hits the bolt with the wrench as hard as she can. The clang of metal on metal rattles through the scaffolding, and she drops the wrench, gives the bolt a cursory twist, and it spins off. She puts the nut in the Captain’s slack palm, closes his fingers around it, and then picks her way back to her pack, and asks where it is she’s supposed to put it.

Cid keeps that nut for the better part of three years, and then has to use it on _no. 26_ ’s oxygen tank housing, because it’s the only one he has left, now that some fucking asshole’s ripped it apart to steal the tank.

* * *

‘Hey,’ he says, quietly.

They’re in the car, idling along the road into Midgar. Cid has his window down all the way, elbow hanging out with the fingertips drumming the beat of the song on the radio, the other on the wheel. Shera is fiddling with her dress, her clutch, trying to readjust her hair, subtly, without him noticing. Every time she moves, he gets a faint curl of her perfume come past his nose. It’s nice enough, but the floral isn’t really her. Clean soap is more the smell he likes on her. He shaved, and one of the boys insisted he put cologne on, like deodorant wasn’t enough.

He feels uncomfortable in the suit, but it fits him perfectly, sleeves showing the right amount, enough give in the shoulders that he doesn’t tear at the seams when he stretches, his balls can breathe. It’s amazing, really, that she managed to get one that fit him.

‘Hey,’ she replies, just as quiet.

‘Don’t stress,’ he tells her. ‘I mean it. You’re doing great work on the engine, and – ‘

‘What if they don’t like me?’ she asks, ‘I’m not. Um. A big part of this.’

‘You’re a huge part of it,’ Cid assures her, and slams his hand on the door. ‘Asshole!’ he yells out of the window. ‘Fucking indicate, or did ShinRa teach you to fucking drive!’

She huffs out a laugh.

‘I’ll be there the whole night,’ he tells her, ‘it’s not going to be a long thing. Take some photos, give the press some statement about how excited we are to be going to space, how thankful we are to that tub of lard for letting us have the opportunity, to ShinRa for giving us the funds. Standard shit. Then we’ll go grab a burger at that joint in Sector 3, and we’ll head for home.’

‘The hotel,’ she says, ‘they’ve put us up in a hotel.’

‘Oh,’ he says, and says nothing else about it.

She doesn’t tell him they were cheap about giving them a room, though. One room, one bed. They think they’re funny.

* * *

Cid is not – well, he is pretty violent, but he’s not a violent man. He’s angry, and he’s been in the military. But he’s not violent, not really.

But there’s something that happens to him when he hears that fucking _idiot_ open his mouth, and he doesn’t know how to explain it.

‘ _Cid! Forget about her! We won’t make it in time_!’

It all sort of blends together, the next thirty seconds of his life. He remembers later that he had panicked, because the question he was forced to answer hadn’t been a question at all, but he had thought it should have been a question, and the question then wasn’t what to do, but what to do about what he knew he had to do. He remembers hitting the emergency shutdown. He remembers the scream of his heart in his ears, the blind panic until he’d heard her voice, asking what had happened.

He remembers unbuckling himself, getting out of the seat. He remembers being so fucking angry, and so fucking sad, and he remembers not really knowing what to do.

Then he remembers, very, _very_ fucking clearly, like still water on a lake, going down the steps, and going to the control cabin, and he remembers dragging the little _fucker_ out by his hair and breaking his nose. And he doesn’t remember stopping until a couple of the other engineers had seen fit to dogpile him and drag him away and someone calling out that someone needed to make a trip to hospital to deliver the fucker.

And he remembers no one being quick to offer.

 _Forget about her_.

He won’t forget about her for as long as he fucking _lives_. She’s just cost him _everything_. He won’t forget.

* * *

Cid stays with her for about two hours, schmoozing and talking about the rocket, and then the champagne hits him; he hasn’t eaten all day, and neither has she, but she eats a canape for every sip from her glass. He doesn’t really drink, she’s noticed, so he knocks it back, and he’s on his fourth glass by the time she’s halfway down her first. She makes the executive decision to keep that glass for the rest of the night, because otherwise they’ll never make it to the hotel.

Scarlet hasn’t been quiet about her opinion of Shera’s dress, and at the first opportunity, Shera goes to the toilets to examine herself seriously. She’d thought it had been an alright dress, gold but not garish. It sparkled, when it caught the light, glittery and fine, to the floor with a little bit of detail at the waist. Conservative neckline, sleeveless without making her look too big in the shoulder considering the lack of – well, the lack of the tits Cid reckoned Palmer wanted to see – and she’d paired it with a little bolero to keep her shoulders warm, and a nice bag and shoes that hurt her feet but gave her an extra few inches next to Cid. Her hair’s up, and it’s starting to come loose, because she’s not used to putting it in more than a scrappy ponytail to get it off her face, but the curls look nice, she thinks. Minimal makeup, because she didn’t want to look like she was on the stage.

‘You look _lovely_ ,’ says an old lady coming out of a stall and going to the sink next to her. She’s got wild, frizzy hair, and she’s portly, and in an outdated dress, but she clearly, _clearly_ , couldn’t give half a shit. ‘Scarlet’s a harpy, don’t let her tell you anything about fashion. That split in her dress has gotten higher every year. Next year, it’ll be up to her tits, no doubt about it.’

Shera breathes a laugh.

‘You’re that,’ the woman clicks her fingers, wracking her brains for the right one, ‘one of the space kids, if I’m not mistaken?’

‘Space kids,’ Shera echoes.

‘I wasn’t going to call you a grease monkey, even though I’ve seen the state of your Captain on any given day. Did he actually wash his hands before coming here tonight?’

‘Twice,’ Shera nods, ‘I made sure of it.’

She’s trying to place where she knows this woman from. She works in ShinRa, but nobody’s wearing their lanyards, and without the colour and department, it’s hard to make a call.

‘The President’s secretary,’ she says.

‘Oh! Ms. Dawlish!’ Shera exclaims, ‘I knew I knew it.’

‘Liz, darling,’ Liza corrects, and yanks a paper towel free to dry her hands. ‘And you’re Shera. Came out of nowhere, from what Gracie, your boss’s secretary, tells me. You know, you look so familiar. I can’t place you. Do you have family working here in the office?’

Shera swallows, and then shakes her head. ‘No, ma’am.’

Liz purses her lips and then shakes her head too. ‘Well, never mind. Ignore Scarlet, eat as many of the grey canapes as you can get your hands on, and try not to let your Captain get too drunk. He still needs to make that statement.’

At this, Shera gasps and rushes out of the toilets, because she’s not stupid enough to let him try and handle the press by himself. Someone came to take a photo of the rocket last week and he nearly killed both himself and the photographer.

It’s as she starts picking her way through the throng of people – so many of them, and so many of them that she doesn’t recognise, all gossiping amongst themselves like old friends, and not a single conversation about the space program that she’s heard yet! – that it happens.

It being Palmer.

Now, this isn’t to say she dislikes Palmer. He’s tolerable, in small doses. A terribly fat little cretin, to be sure. But he’s paying their wages, and letting them build a rocket, and he gives them free reign to do what they think is right by the project. All he wants to do is be right, and show up Heidegger, and if they can do that, then that’s fine by him. He puts too much sweetness in his tea, and everything he touches is covered in butter or grease, and he stinks to high heaven of pig fat. But she can handle him. Better than Cid can, anyway, because Cid will just leave whatever room Palmer enters, and not make any excuse for it.

She pauses to take stock of the room, shoving one of those grey canapes in her mouth – and Liz had been right, the grey stuff was delicious, in a way she didn’t expect something grey to be – and locating Cid. He’s undone his jacket, shoved his sleeves up, because he’s a savage, and is chatting with a reporter type, some pretty girl with a big hairdo and her dress cut lower than should be entirely safe for the public eye. He looks bored, but he’s engaged enough – drunk enough – to keep the conversation going. For a second, she just stops and watches him, the way she usually stops and watches him when he’s got no chance of seeing her. He’d combed his hair, but it’s obvious his hands have been in it. There’s half a smile on his mouth, his eyes alight. He’s talking about space, because he only looks like that when he’s talking about space.

(He’s not. He’s talking about her, about how they met.)

She’s near a surface, so she leans on it, just one elbow, chin in her hand, and she watches him, frowns when he scans the room, a quick second-long flick of his eyes that people who _don’t_ watch him wouldn’t catch.

Then she leaps a mile, because there’s hands on her ass, just for a moment, squeezing tight, and Palmer appears at her ear.

‘You’re looking _heavenly_ ,’ he breathes, and his breath is a hot mist on her neck.

She stiffens, back pulling tight, and Shera is not weak, but she knows she’s not that strong. Not really. She looks at Cid, but he’s still looking elsewhere.

‘He’s really missing out,’ Palmer continues, and one hand stays low on her back, lower than strictly necessary. ‘A regular Venus like you, he’s got to be blind.’

‘Sir,’ she grits out, and tightens her hand around her clutch. She hasn’t got anything in there, really; lipstick, both her and Cid’s ID cards, the car keys. It’s not enough to bludgeon him with, and she’d never be so bold. But she would, if she had to.

‘ _Shera_ ,’ he replies. ‘It really is lovely to see you here. I can’t believe the Captain’s left you to the wolves.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, _sir_ ,’ she snipes, and yanks herself free of the grip he almost has on her.

She tries her best not to storm. Shera is not a storming sort of girl, but she gets to the toilets as quickly as she can. She twists her ankle on the steps leading out of the pompous little echo chamber they’re created for themselves, and as soon as she’s behind the doors of the toilet, she yanks her shoes off and puts her hands over her mouth to scream.

* * *

She finds out later that Matteo, the kid from ShinRa who’d joined them in April to help smooth over the last few bumps in the launch, the one that no one really liked because he was up their asses about protocol and behaviour and would be in Cid’s space to both exonerate and belittle him in the same breath, she finds out that he’s in the hospital.

‘What?’ she asks, wrapped in a blanket and sat on the steps of the inn, with Reine next to her, holding a cup of tea.

Across the way, the boys are hooting and hollering, making provision for the rocket, debating loudly how – no question of if – they’ll get it upright again.

‘Well,’ Reine starts, staring at her mug. ‘He was – the Captain wasn’t happy.’

‘And it’s my fault,’ Shera breathes.

‘Not at all, you were doing your job.’

‘And I cost him his.’

‘He’s cost himself his job if Matteo files a complaint. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s going to cost them a lot of Gil to put his face right.’

‘What did he _do_?’

She hasn’t touched her tea; it’s cold. She looks at Reine, who looks at the floor, and then off into the distance. She doesn’t know where Cid is, hasn’t seen him since before the launch.

‘This is what I’ve heard, mind,’ Reine says, ‘you want to ask John, if you want more details. This is just what he’s told me. Matteo had – opinions – about leaving you in there, when the rocket went up. His words were to – disgusting – he said to forget about you. The Captain, he – well, he didn’t take too kindly to that. Think all the emotion just came out and Matteo took the brunt of it. He’s lucky to be alive, the way John tells it. Took three of them just to get hold of the Captain, never mind pry him off.’

Shera stares at her mug. The Captain – did that?

Because of her?

It’s her fault. All of it. It’s all her fault, and sorry won’t cover it this time.

* * *

She takes ten minutes to compose herself. She’s spent more time in the toilet than she has out there _schmoozing_. She stows her shoes under a cabinet, and if she never gets to reclaim them, then they were given up for a worthy cause. She splashes her face, dabs the run of mascara off her cheek, and tells herself that Palmer is a pig, and she knew this.

Cid is outside, fiddling with his tie. She says fiddling, but he’s pulled it off, undone his top two buttons and is twisting around his hand one way then the other.

‘You’ve taken your shoes off,’ he says, without hesitation, the moment she gets within two feet of him.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘twisted my ankle.’

‘Saw you stomp off,’ he grunts, ‘c’mon, we’ll go out on the balcony. Get some air. Toilets on this floor fuckin’ stink. They made the air vents too wide.’

‘I didn’t stomp,’ she whispers, but he just snorts and shoulders a couple of admin staff out of the way so that they can get to the balcony.

‘What happened?’ he asks, ‘assuming it was Palmer, since he was giggling to himself like a fucking child.’

She hesitates, which is her first mistake. Then she shakes her head, which is her second, and the nail in the coffin is when she says, ‘oh, nothing. He’s just a – he’s a – a – he’s vile.’

‘Yeah,’ Cid nods, but his knuckles are white on the railing. ‘Yeah, he’s good at that.’

Which isn’t a _bad_ reply, but it’s not a good one either.

His tie is still wound round his hand, and she gently lays hers atop it.

‘It’s fine,’ she tells him, ‘really. I just – need to grow a backbone.’

‘He needs to lose his,’ Cid spits, and he looks at her, wild, and Shera searches him back. ‘You’re okay?’

‘Startled. But I’m okay.’

And she is. She’s processed that her boss is a creep, and she’d always known he was a creep, and all told, it – it wasn’t that much. She can deal with it. It’s her ass, and she’s had the boys on the crew brush against her by accident all the time. They don’t ever do it deliberately – most of them are married! – but space is on short supply when you’re all up in the scaffolding together. She can deal with people touching her when she doesn’t want to be touched. And if she tells Cid, they won’t _have_ a boss left.

‘Hey,’ he says, and his eyes are saying something she doesn’t have words for, they’re too hazy for her to make it out, drunk. ‘I’m starving. I’ve talked to the press. We can go, if you want. That burger joint in Sector 3’s still open.’

‘Palmer hasn’t done a big speech,’ she says.

‘Bollocks,’ Cid says, ‘I forgot about that.’

‘You carry on, Captain,’ she says, ‘it’s your dream, you need to keep on. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine, honestly.’

And she is fine, she’s just ready to go. A burger sounds really good right about now. A burger, and her pyjamas, and not seeing Palmer’s ugly, slimy face for another two weeks. That’s what she wants.

So they go back inside, and Cid gets caught up with some random ShinRa cronies he’s never spoken to before. She slinks off, and wonders, not for the first time, if it was like this in the Science Department. If they had to deal with the kind of press they’ve had tonight. Thankfully, nobody’s really asked her questions. She’s the plus-one, really, even though she knows Cid has been telling anyone who will listen about how slowly and thoroughly she works, how she’s been a big part of making all this happen.

But she’s not recognised, and so she can slink back to the canapes, and down an entire glass of champagne in one pull.

‘That good, huh?’ Liz asks, and at Shera’s look, laughs. ‘Welcome to ShinRa, darling.’

Palmer hits a glass with a fork, and climbs up onto a chair, because he’s too short to be seen.

‘Everyone!’ he calls, ‘attention, attention! We have a few words we’d like to say.’

Cid, the other side of the room, snorts, but goes to his boss, looking even less professional now than ever, tie _still_ on his hand, and Shera catches his eye, makes an aggravated gesture by her hip that his him shove the tie in his pocket, his sleeves rolled up, hair a mess. God only knows what they think of him, the drunk fool.

She stays stood by Liz for the duration of the most awkward, uncomfortable speech she’s ever witnessed in her life, and she remembers her parents when she found the box of photographs in the attic, the way they’d tried to explain it, the – the lack of a grave. That had been uncomfortable, but that’s nothing on this.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Palmer intones, like he has any authority, which is the point Shera tunes out.

‘He’s very handsome, if you like that sort of thing,’ Liz whispers from behind her glass, as Cid nods along with what Palmer’s saying, all bottom lip and strong jaw, before thanking his boss and opening his mouth.

‘If you like that sort of thing,’ Shera agrees, because right now she likes food and sleep, and nothing else.

‘I remember when he came to interview,’ Liz continues, ‘a real bright young thing. Star in the making. The bluest eyes I’ve seen outside of SOLDIER. Like a summer sky, and he held all the breadth of it in them to boot.’

Shera half-smiles. ‘Why, Ms. Dawlish, you have a crush on the Captain?’

‘Ha!’ Liz squawks, and everyone in earshot looks at her; Cid is talking about something very serious, and a laugh is not appropriate. ‘Goodness heavens, no, girl. I remember his interview, and I remember what the military did to him. We were just starting that godawful war with Wutai, for all the good it did, and he was straight up there to volunteer, desperate to get in the skies. A brilliant mind, but – the military was the wrong place for him.’

‘He’s getting his dream now, though,’ Shera argues, softly. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to if he hadn’t had a foot in the door.’

‘You think ShinRa _really_ cares about space?’ Liz asks, and shakes her head. ‘Darling, the things I could tell you about this company would turn you grey before your time.’

But Shera is young, barely twenty-five, and like most people, has no interest in hearing about it. She grew up with ShinRa, with the electric they provide, and the military strength. And she’s not so enamoured of them as she was, but she’s not disillusioned yet.

Yet.

‘Sure,’ she says, and Cid is _still_ talking.

The speech goes on, and she keeps watching him, the way he laughs and rubs his neck, the way he pushes his sleeves up, reflexively, even though they won’t go past mid-forearm. The pink in his ears and cheeks, the way he comes _alive_ talking about space, and all the things they’ll be able to find up there, the things they’ll be able to learn. He talks about being a child, about dreaming of the stars. He talks about the help he’s had, with the crew, with the support from ShinRa, to make this dream a reality. He’s really very grateful, and he hopes that what they achieve on April 12th will be the first in many missions to the stars.

A polite round of applause, some snaps of cameras, and he’s stepping away. The music begins again, the conversation ebbs back in, and the schmoozing goes back to the other departments.

Nobody cares. What he’s said has made no impact. It never was going to.

She turns to apologise to Liz, to ask what she knows, but the secretary is gone, and she’s alone. Her head aches; she drank the champagne too fast.

For a moment, she just stands there and rubs her temple. Then she looks around the room, at all the people who _don’t_ care, and all the conversations that aren’t about space, about the stars, about the hard effort that they’ve been putting in to make this happen. She looks at the calluses on her palms, worn hard by the wrenches and screwdrivers and pieces of rocket she’s carried around. She was only brought in to do the delicate, technical things. Check the oxygen tanks function, the control wires aren’t crossed. The things that the big lumbering boys can’t do with their big, grease-stained hands. But she offers up her muscles, because they’re needed.

Finally, she looks up, and she meets Cid’s eyes across the room. He’s got another glass in his hand, and he reads her face like a book. She wants to go home, and he can see that. He downs the glass in one, slams it so hard on a server’s tray that the stem shatters and the tray almost tips clean over, and then he’s hopping down a step to cross the room. He grabs her arm without words, and starts dragging. On the way to the door, she hears someone titter about how he’ll be lucky if he can get it up, the way he’s been drinking, and she has to grab _his_ arm to stop him turning.

His temper will be dangerous, one day.

They don’t stop to get her shoes, and he doesn’t let her drive.

* * *

He doesn’t talk to her for three days. She has a salve for the superficial burns she’d got on her hands from the heat of the rocket when she’d pulled herself out, and she doesn’t see him for the first forty-eight hours. The phone in what had unofficially been their cabin – not because she was staying in it with him, but because she was there so often, helping out with all the things the Captain hadn’t had time to do; laundry, cooking, cleaning, blueprints and wiring orders. The little things. She’d been there to help – has been ringing non-stop. She answered it once, heard Palmer’s voice, shrieking and furious, and had put it straight down again without saying anything else.

She’s just about given up, and he reappears, bedraggled, black-eyed, holes in his knees, on the doorstep when she’s scrubbing the floor for something to do.

‘Where have you been?’ she asks, and it comes out of her so sharply that they both recoil.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he snaps back, and she looks at the wet wood in front of her, covered in suds.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, and he barks a laugh, stomps past her, dragging mud across the floor.

It’s deliberate, she knows, and she gets up, gets a dustpan and brush.

‘Sorry ain’t worth shit,’ he snaps, and slams the door of his bedroom behind him.

A picture rattles and falls on the floor. She picks that up, too.

* * *

He’s a better driver drunk than he is sober, and they pull into a space outside the burger joint in Sector 3. There’s a couple other customers, workers stopping to eat on their way home, a date. They’re overdressed and underfed, and they order before taking a seat.

‘You’re alright?’ he asks, again.

‘I’m fine,’ she promises. ‘Just hungry. Glad to be out of there.’

‘It’s a lion’s den,’ he agrees, ‘utter rubbish, but we have to do it.’

‘No one _cared_ , did you notice? I listened to so many conversations, but not _one_ of them was about the project.’

He snorts. ‘Never expected them too. But ain’t about them, eh? About us, about my dream.’

His dream.

They eat in relative silence; half his burger falls out, and he gets sauce on the end of his nose.

She thinks she might be in love with him.

They go back to the hotel, and her feet leave spots of blood across the floor when they climb the stairs.

‘One fucking bed?’ he asks, on entering, and tosses the bag she’d taken out of the boot but he’d insisted on carrying, onto a chair. ‘Fucking ridiculous. Get your feet cleaned up, kid, I’ll take the couch. Fucking cheapskates.’

Shera purses her lips, but closes the door, and doesn’t argue. She hangs her dress up, and washes and puts her pyjamas on, and then – she doesn’t sleep.

Cid doesn’t sleep. She hears him toss and turn and grunt and snort and curse, and she whispers, when it’s closer to morning than night, if he wants to just join her in the bed, instead of being uncomfortable.

He tells her to fuck off, and that’s the end of that.

* * *

Six months pass. He talks to her, if you can call it talking, and she figures that – well, if he hated her, he wouldn’t have her in his house, would he? It’s not like he needs her now. The company have pulled funding, and they’re doing their own thing. The boys are good mechanics outside of rockets, and are making decent money doing customising jobs on vehicles for the ShinRa admin that think that kind of thing is important. Cid – well, he doesn’t do a lot. He sits still for long periods, and disappears for long periods, and doesn’t talk to her for long periods, but he always comes back, and he always brings something home with him. Tea, bread, milk, a packet of biscuits from Mideel.

She shows him a letter that had come through from ShinRa. He has a dig about her reading his mail, and she tells him that it was addressed to her, and if he reads it, he’ll understand why. (He’d been sent no less than five letters, and he’d ignored all of them, so they mailed her, hoping to get an answer). He reads the letter. He looks at her. He laughs, and he throws it in the bin.

Matteo has had his last surgery to fix his face, and he still doesn’t look right. One of the boys went out to talk to him, very quietly. A complaint hasn’t been filed, and Cid is still technically employed as a pilot. His wage keeps coming in, and he keeps spending it on cigarettes and bread.

A couple days later, she hears swearing, and leaves the Inn – Reine has let her stay there, board-free, in exchange for help with the cooking and cleaning, even though there’s no reason for her to be here anymore – to find Cid and a couple of the lads dragging a sheet of metal across the grass.

She stands on the path and watches them, dishcloth in hand, and strains her ears to hear them talking about it.

He read the letter. He’s building the airship.

* * *

They get home, and someone they don’t know is looking at the rocket.

Cid is hungover, and he’s exhausted after no sleep and the drive, but he’s still able to holler louder than Shera thinks any normal man should be able to holler.

‘Fuck you doing?’

The figure looks at them, and skitters, runs. Shera had packed a pair of trousers and a t-shirt for him in her bag, but hadn’t thought to put boots in, and hadn’t she heard about that in the morning! Who packs a change of clothes, but doesn’t give him a chance to change out of his dress shoes? So Cid is dressed sensibly enough to take off after this mysterious character.

Shera picks up the bag, and takes it back to his cabin. It’s a house, really, when you get right down to it. But it has indoor plumbing and he has somewhere to put his head, so really, does it matter? She hangs his suit and her dress up, and puts the laundry in the basket to take to the cleaners on Monday.

She looks out of the window, sees Cid still chasing the figure across the grass, and goes to put the kettle on.

* * *

The oxygen tank is damaged, but Cid won’t hear of it. Says it’s fine. Says that it was just the housing, they didn’t manage to steal it, just pry it loose.

He goes to bed, sure that it’s fine. They launch tomorrow.

Shera wakes with a start at half-one in the morning. The inn is quiet. She dresses, goes outside. There’s nobody out there. The stars are winking at her, and the dew on the grass is a thousand diamonds, twinkling back.

The lights in Cid’s house are off, and she steps, barefoot, onto the porch, listens hard. She can just about hear him snore.

She’s got to make sure the tank is right. It’s his dream on the line. He’d spoken to the President, and they aren’t going to delay the launch. If it’s not right, it could hurt him. Kill him.

The steps are cold beneath her fingers and toes as she climbs, moon-cold metal a warning.

She’ll just check it over. Make sure that the results are right. It won’t take her long. Then she can sleep, and watch the launch in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liz Dawlish, the President's Secretary, as played by Miriam Margolyes because reasons.


	4. Snow and Ice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang reach the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for sadness and Cid being a very tired dad.

He doesn’t think space would be as cold as this.

They’d done readings, of course, in the earlier rockets, and Palmer had talked a fine talk about how space is cold, how the heat from the sun doesn’t reach the dark corners between the stars. And he _knows_ this, he knows that space would be _cold_.

But it can’t be as cold as this.

It’s late, so late that it’s early, but he’s out here anyway, scarf high about his nose, cigarette curled into his palm and burning down to the filter, boots flecked white with the falling snow. He sits, and he stares out at the paths, already filled in from where they’d trampled, weak and weary and so fucking _tired_. He watches the lights in the other buildings flicker. He watches the moon watching him, peeking between clouds. He imagines he sees her smile, so knowing and so – so –

He grits his teeth, eyes burning, and drops the cigarette, stomps on it.

After a moment, he runs a hand across his face, scrubs his eyes, lights another cigarette.

Fuck it.

A half-hour passes like this, sitting and staring and doing not a whole lot.

Yuffie is asleep, he knows this for a fact, had checked on her before coming outside. She’s done a lot of sleeping. She’s tired. They’re all tired. Tifa had been curled around her, as much as she could have, and her face had been wet, but she’d been asleep too. He can’t do much else for them.

He pulls his scarf down, takes a deep drag of his cigarette, watches it mist more than smoke, mingling with the heat of his breath before dissipating into nothing.

Nothing.

He shudders, and rubs his eyes again, finds himself patting himself down for his PHS. It’s been almost a week since the – since Aerith took off. He hasn’t spoken to Shera. She’s probably worried.

And though he’ll never say it out loud. Well. Her voice is – he thinks he needs to hear it. Needs to hear her talk bollocks to him about shit that doesn’t matter. He needs her to tell him about how they’re going to beat ShinRa, and Sephiroth, and how she’s been digging into who’s controlling Cait Sith even though he told her not to. He needs to hear how John and Reine at the Inn have been giving any ShinRa employees that rock up a hard time, how the old fart that keeps staring at the rocket is adamant that the news is just nonsense propaganda, because he knows the Captain, he knows that if he’s joining up with some eco-terrorist organisation, they’re doing something very worthwhile, because the Captain’s a good man. Impatient, and angry, and hard on himself, but a good man.

He doesn’t feel very much like a good man at the moment, and he admits to himself that he needs someone who – who he – who means something to him, who _he_ means something to – to tell him that it’s going to be okay.

So he goes to his most recent call list, and scrolls past the last few calls, because they – well, they aren’t going to get an answer, like they didn’t get an answer when he called in the first place – and he clicks Shera’s name, holds it to his ear.

The call rings out, and he feels the burn in his throat, his eyes, his nose, as he hits redial. Just the cold and the smoke of his cigarette. That’s all.

It rings five times, and he’s sure it’s about to disconnect again when it clicks and the ring changes to a sleepy, ‘hello?’

His breath shudders, mist in front of his face. ‘It’s me,’ he manages to choke out.

‘Captain?’ Shera is awake now, and he can hear the rustle of sheets as she sits up, the click as she puts the light on. ‘It’s – it’s two in the morning, are you alright?’

He’s quiet for a moment, weighing up the answer, and the silence is enough. Her audible demeanour changes, worry changing for concern, curiosity for grim understanding.

‘Captain,’ she breathes, ‘what – what do you need me to do?’

Cid licks his lips. They feel dry. His eyes are burning, and his cheeks are wet when he wipes his face with a hand.

‘I – Shera, I.’

‘Hey.’ It’s barely a whisper, and he barely hears it over the weight of the air in his lungs. ‘Hey, Captain, I – Listen to me, _it wasn’t your fault_. I don’t know what happened, but it wasn’t your fault.’

‘She’s dead.’

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. Yuffie had been the only one to say it, screaming it at him like it _was_ his fault, howling it like a wounded animal, and he’d nodded, and agreed, because yeah, she is, and Yuffie had cried, she’d sobbed, and punched him in the chest, and soaked through his shirt, and he’d held her. They’d all been saying – gone. Like she’s popped to the shops, and they’d best put the kettle on for when she gets back. Gone, and lost, and he’s not particularly sentimental, as men go, but even that had been – death had been too hard for him to say.

Shera is quiet for a moment, and he rubs at his face, wipes his hand on his trousers.

‘Aerith,’ she replies, and it’s not a question.

‘Yeah.’

Shera’s breath is hard, heavy, a rush of air out of her lungs, and it shudders, a little.

‘She was nice,’ she offers, and he nods.

‘She was a pain in my ass,’ he replies. ‘A good kid. Fucking stupid, trying to – she was – she tried to take him on by herself.’

‘Did he,’ Shera starts, and then swallows. ‘Was it him?’

‘He’s a piece of shit,’ Cid spits then, and tosses the cigarette, burnt out but not smoked, into the snow. ‘He’s a piece of shit and we’re going to kill him.’

‘I know you are,’ she nods. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘The fuck are you apologising for?’ he snaps. ‘Who the _fuck_ are you to apologise?’

And Shera, this steadfast, loyal little life-wrecker, she just takes it, she takes the anger that comes spilling out of him, the horrible words, and the wretched tone, and the insults, she takes it. She sits there – well, no, when he stops to draw breath, he can hear her, padding about on hard flooring, the whistle of the kettle – and she takes it. She listens to him until he runs out of things to insult her with, and she says, ‘I understand,’ like he didn’t just say he’d rather it had been her, because Aerith actually contributed something to the planet.

‘That was fucking rude,’ he says, because it was.

‘Yes,’ she agrees, ‘but you’re not to blame. Sephiroth is the problem here, Captain, and – if I’m honest, you saying nothing to me is worse than most of the things that come out of your mouth.’

His breath hitches, but he refuses to hiccup. ‘Don’t make it right,’ he tells her.

‘No. But you’re grieving, Captain, and – this is all I can do. I can’t – I can’t make you tea, or – or – well, I can’t _do_ anything from here. But I can listen. And you can talk. If you want to.’

Cid has _never_ wanted to talk to her in his life. But he’s always seemed to end up doing it, late at night when the rest of the crew had retired, they’d always seemed to be sat out in the grass behind his house, or on the steps of the rocket, or anywhere they had space to sit, and they’d talk. He’d end up telling her so many things he never intended to tell anyone, never mind her. Things about his childhood, about growing up with That Name, the name that everyone in town knows, things about his school, and the war, and his life afterwards, the fear that he’d never actually make it to space, that ShinRa would pull funding. He’d tell her about his interests outside of work, the reason he started smoking, the hope that one day he’d be able to stop. He hadn’t told her most of his secrets, the deep-down secrets that even he had no real access to. But he’d told her the rest.

‘What do I even say?’ he asks, which is how this usually begins.

‘Whatever you like,’ she replies, and sips at her tea. ‘Go make yourself a drink, get yourself warm, you’re always grumpier when you’re cold. And take the time you need.’

He doesn’t say anything for a very long time. He goes inside, and he makes a drink, and he sits by the fire, which is embers now, but easily stoked back to a smoulder, and he doesn’t say anything. Shera waits him out for a few minutes, but when he says nothing, she fills the space. It’s been nearly a week since he called her at Gongaga, and so there are things to tell him; updates on the Inn, and the news bulletins telling them all the lies about AVALANCHE and the nefarious Captain Highwind that joined their ranks. She tells him about a stray cat that came to town, and how they’d all lost their minds over it, as if they’d never seen a cat before. She tells him about a dream she had, about her sister. She tells him about the sunset she’d seen that day, and how it had been really pink, which they didn’t get often in Rocket Town, but it was pretty to see it. She wonders, in that way Shera wonders about most things, whether that was the planet, acknowledging that Aerith was gone, whether it was raising a glass to her, as it were.

‘Painting the sky the pink of her ribbon,’ she says, and that’s where he breaks and starts to cry.

Now, the thing is, Cid doesn’t cry. He didn’t cry when his father died, he didn’t cry when he left his mother to join the army, he didn’t even shed a fucking tear when they pulled the funding for the rocket. He doesn’t cry. But he sobs now, PHS pressed to his ear, face pressed into his other hand, and Shera says nothing for a minute, lets him weep.

‘Captain,’ she says, when the sobs peter out. ‘Listen to me. You’re going to be alright. You’ll sleep, and it’ll be like you didn’t, every single one of you will have a bad sleep. But you’re going to get up in the morning, and you’re going to carry on. You’ll find Sephiroth, and you’ll end this mess. You’ll stop ShinRa, and you’ll save the world. And you’ll come home. You’ll come back to me. Do you hear me, Captain? You’re coming home to me.’

‘Don’t fucking want to,’ he chokes out, and she laughs, actually laughs.

‘Of course you do,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t be able to make a decent brew for as long as you lived now, I’ve seen you. You don’t drink tea unless I make it, and what then? Become a _coffee_ drinker? Cid Highwind, drinking coffee? Now _that_ would be a news report I’d pay to see!’

She’s teasing him. She’s teasing him, and he’s going to – to –

He owes her his life, he knows this. Deep down, under all the anger, he knows he owes her. If she said that there was something wrong with the tank, then there was something wrong, and he knows this, deep past where he’s willing to admit to it. And if it hadn’t been for her staunch refusal to listen to him, he’d be dead now, space debris floating in the atmosphere. And sure, if he was dead then, he wouldn’t be feeling this – this – _grief_ now. But he wouldn’t – he wouldn’t –

‘Shera,’ he says, and she hums.

‘I know,’ she says, and he doesn’t know what she knows, but he trusts that she does.

He rubs an eyebrow, sends himself cross-eyed with the pressure on his eye, and yawns.

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘yeah. I – I felt _helpless_. It was all out of my control, and I couldn’t do _anything_.’

‘I know,’ she repeats, soft. ‘But I’ve – Yuffie is going to need you. She already did, just in the time I saw her. And you’re there, and I know you’re going to scoff and dismiss it and say you wouldn’t care if she disappeared and you never saw her again, but I pay attention, Captain, and you know I do. She’s going to need you more than ever, and you’re going to have to be there.’

Cid chews through his lip, and then swallows, sighs. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees. ‘I know. She’s taken it hard. She’s so fucking young, Shera. She’s a _child_.’

‘Then there’s your answer,’ she says, like he asked her a question. ‘You’ve got her to think about, same as you have the others. She’s a good kid. She’ll be alright, but only if you’re there with her.’

‘You’re a fucking nuisance,’ he tells her.

‘I do my best,’ she replies, because she knows better than to apologise. ‘Go to bed, Captain, and I’ll – I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay? I’m here, whenever you need me. Give the others my number, too, tell them that they can call any time.’

‘You’ll never get any work done,’ he tells her, ‘not that you fucking do anyway.’

But it’s softer now, the barbs worn smooth by the salt in his throat. She snorts, and tells him to take care before dropping the line.

He sits there for another few minutes, stares into the fire, and then shakes his head, goes to bed.

* * *

He wakes up with Yuffie curled under his arm, face buried in his chest. He doesn’t remember going to sleep, and feels the sort of groggy that comes with sleep catching him off-guard and being incomplete. Too short, maybe, or just disturbed. Either way, his eyes are gritty, and without really thinking about it, he tightens his arm around her, twists to ease the weight of her cheek, and buries his face in her hair. It’s still early, dark outside still, and he can’t have been asleep for more than two, three hours.

They’ve got a long journey ahead of them today, and he’s not excited about trampling through the snow. But travel they must, if they’re going to do as Shera said. Stop the bastard, stop ShinRa, save the world. Then he can go home.

He supposes, breathing in the smell of Yuffie’s hair, sweat and soap and sugar, that he owes Shera an apology. She’s been – well, she’s been holding him up all this time, and he’s been awfully fucking rude.

‘Are you awake?’ Yuffie whispers, and he hadn’t even felt her stir.

He grunts, and she wriggles, gets closer still. Her fingers clutch tight at his t-shirt, and her breath is hot and wet.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she whispers, as though hoping the cotton will swallow it and stop him hearing. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Too late to fuckin’ mind,’ he replies, just as quiet, and she wedges her legs under his, hiding herself completely.

‘I kept dreaming about him. He was there. He was killing everyone.’

‘He can try,’ Cid tells her. ‘I’ll kick his arse if he tries.’

‘He’ll kill you too.’

‘Nah, I’m too stubborn for that. Like a fuckin’ ox, me. I’ll take him on, and I’ll take Godo on, too. Told you, eh? I’ll take ‘em on.’

She is – a little bit comforted, she supposes. She softens in his grip, and if she cries, it’s quiet, and he doesn’t draw attention to it. And well, if he cries too, no one has to know.

* * *

Cloud doesn’t really say anything when they set off. He just mumbles something about getting going, and they all fall in behind him, slow and plodding along, unsure really about what to do with themselves. They walk up the cliff, and they walk along the glacier, and Cid is bored of seeing the snow by the time they get inside the crater. The party are sort of coming to themselves again, in that stuttering, uncertain sort of way, where they aren’t sure if they can make jokes, but it’s too exhausting to be sad. There’s too much to do, to think about, to pay attention to. They’ve just got to keep going, and they’re all compartmentalising their grief for now.

Really, he thinks, looking at the grey edge of Tifa’s cheeks, they need a week to stop and process everything that’s happening. They need a week to just. Let it all sink in. But they haven’t got a week, and he supposes if they make it through all this, if they get any sort of victory, they’ll be owed some psychologists, some therapy. Cloud especially. Kid ain’t right, and Cid wonders if he was ever right.

Yuffie is the first to hit the deck, and that’s where tempers start to flare. Tifa is the first to start, and Cid supposes, as he and Vincent trade off packs so Cid can hike Yuffie over his shoulders and carry her, that she’s had a _lot_ of thinking to be doing, and a lot to be angry about.

Still, hearing her curse the way she is, the accusation that Cloud’s actively trying to get them all killed, the anger, the bitterness, it’s not nice. Barret tries to stymy her flow, but that just makes it worse, and then they descend into just – he hasn’t heard rows like this since they first pulled funding for the space program.

‘Listen,’ he barks, even though no one is, ‘we’ve got to get her warm. Been there, done that, had the fucking _heart attack_ that comes with this shit. Can we pack it in for _five fucking minutes_?’

Nobody packs it in. He looks at Red, who nods his head slowly, and with a wag of his tail, takes off down the path. Vincent follows him, and the three – four, technically, what with Yuffie on Cid’s back – of them plod off into the snow, away from the screeching and rowing.

After another ten minutes, in which Cid is getting more and more irate, they come across a cabin. There’s a man just coming out of it, wrapped up warm.

‘Travellers,’ he says, and nods to himself, steps aside, gesturing. ‘In, in, quickly.’

‘I’ve had hypothermia,’ Cid says, ducking through the doorway, ‘I know what to do.’

‘There are others,’ Vincent adds, ‘out on the path.’

Holzoff, as the man introduces himself, is concerned, so Cid sends Vincent with him.

Red helps as much as he can, but besides redressing Yuffie in dry clothes, which she helps with as much as she can, being cold and tired as she is, and bundling her in blankets near the fire, there’s little they can do. Cid makes a hot drink, and he tells – orders, really – Yuffie to sip at it, before rooting in her pack for anything that might have enough sugar to get her going again.

‘You had it?’ she slurs, and he nods.

‘Not from snow,’ he says, ‘rain. Few years ago, there was a bad storm, and I ignored advice to stay out in it. Knocked myself out falling down the stairs.’

‘You’re an idiot,’ Yuffie tells him, and he nods.

‘I am,’ he agrees. ‘Fuckin’ stupid. You’ll be alright, just need to get you warmed through. Sleep, kid, we ain’t going anywhere.’

‘I miss her,’ she says, and Cid knows.

‘I know,’ he tells her, and rests a hand on her head, takes the cup from her so she can curl up under the blankets.

‘Tifa was, cross,’ Red hedges a few minutes later, when Yuffie’s breath has evened out.

‘She has every right to be,’ Cid shrugs. ‘We’re all cross. Angry. Hurt. And it – it ain’t the kid’s fault, but he needs to stop, for a _minute_. This is all too much.’

‘Do you regret it?’ Red asks, ‘joining us? The fight?’

Cid scoffs, and then sighs. ‘I don’t know. I don’t – yeah, I guess. Not really.’ A single laugh. ‘I don’t know what I feel, what I think.’

‘Did you speak to Shera?’

‘Everyone on my ass today, huh? Yeah. She thinks we’ll be fine, before you ask. She thinks we’ll do it. Succeed. Win. What the fuck ever, she thinks we’re good.’

‘Then let that be enough,’ Red says, like he’s got any sort of sage wisdom, some deep knowledge to impart. He’s a kid, same as the rest.

Cid scoffs again, sighing like Red knows so little as to know nothing, and goes outside for a cigarette.

* * *

Holzoff convinces them to stay for the night, looks at them once he’s got them all in the cabin, bedraggled, tired, empty-hearted, and tells them they can’t possibly go any further today.

‘We have to,’ Cloud starts, and the boys shut him down because Tifa’s about to start winding up again, and fuck that game.

‘We have to do _nothing_ ,’ Barret snaps, and Cloud pipes down.

‘It’s obvious something terrible has happened,’ Holzoff says, ‘but you cannot carry on without having time to grieve it. You _must_ take time now, or the mountain will kill you.’

‘We’re heading for the crater,’ Barret says, ‘where – where the calamity happened.’

Holzoff nodded. ‘Then yes, rest is your best ally now. Take tonight, leave in the morning. You will be safe here.’

Cid, sat in the back corner with Yuffie curled between him and the wall, his hand on her back to feel the heat of her skin, feels – feels – relief, almost. Is it relief?

Either way, they’re stopping, and he’s _tired_.

Tifa helps Holzoff make dinner, and they don’t really say a lot as they bunk down, huddling together without even hinting that they wouldn’t stab each other in their sleep. Vincent, in typical Vincent fashion, sits by the door, gun in his lap and head against the wall.

‘Can’t sleep?’ Cid asks, when he counts hour number four on his watch, and gets up to pick his way across bodies to go to the door to smoke.

‘No,’ Vincent replies, quiet, a whisper. ‘You neither.’

‘No. Tifa cried herself to sleep.’

‘Yes. Cloud will have to – grow up.’

Ironic, considering the strip Cid’s had off Vincent’s back about the same thing. Cid snorts and inches the door open enough to slip through it. Vincent comes with him, and they stand in the shadow of the cabin, looking out over the snow, twinkling like a thousand stars in the moonlight. There are dark clouds overhead, a storm brewing. Maybe it’s just what it’s like here, so close to the crater.

‘What happened?’ Cid asks, and offers Vincent the cigarette, but he shakes his head once, hand coming up to push it away without touching it.

‘In what regard?’

‘Take your pick.’

Vincent says nothing for a while, and then tells him why he ended up in the coffin. Cid looks at him, in the moonlight, the sharp line of his nose, the curve of his jaw, his hair falling across his temple like some kind of magazine model, and he – in the flash of his eye as he looks across the horizon, he sees it. The glitter of the silver of the moonlight hitting his hair, the pallor of his skin. He sees it.

‘Well, fuck me,’ he grunts.

‘I believe you are engaged,’ Vincent replies, and that just – just –

Cid laughs. He laughs, and he doesn’t stop laughing until Yuffie’s stumbling out of the cabin, bleary-eyed and confused, wondering what the hell’s going on. Cid doesn’t know how to explain it, so she calls him a crazy old man and goes back to bed.

* * *

Cloud cannot keep the materia, this Tifa is absolutely right about. In the end, Red’s the only one who’ll take it, and that says something about the nature of this whole business, Cid thinks, perching himself on a rock and tapping a cigarette back and forth across his knee, because all they can do is wait. Sephiroth is there, this they know. Sephiroth is there, and Cloud, Tifa and Barret have gone to deal with him. It has to be them, and this is something Cid is fine with. He’ll punch Sephiroth in the face and it’ll do him _no good_ , but hey. At least his death will have been interesting.

Cid Highwind, dead at thirty-two for punching a mass-murdering fuckhead in the face.

Shera would find a way to bring him back just to kill him again.

Waiting gets boring very quickly, and there’s only so many times they can ponder how Cloud and the others are doing. Cid smokes three cigarettes, and then everything goes very dark.

‘The fuck?’ he demands, and he snatches his spear out from between the rocks where he’d wedged it, knees bent.

The darkness laughs back at him.

‘Oh,’ he says, and he’s squinting, peering through the swirling mists, trying to make out a shape, a body, anything he can. ‘I see. I _see_.’

Even though, really, it does nothing, he yanks his goggles down anyway, and he very carefully does _nothing_. He scans the area, watches the mists, and he waits, listens.

He can hear Red calling, Yuffie. He hollers back, but says nothing. Cait is saying nothing, but Cait is a robot, and he still doesn’t trust the fucker. Vincent is – well, he doesn’t know where Vincent is, can’t hear him, but he knows the ugly fucker can cope by himself.

‘Cid!’ Yuffie hollers, ‘Cid, Red’s gone!’

He swipes his nose, and shifts his weight. ‘What about Vincent?’

A screech, and he knows that noise.

Death Gigas.

‘Yuffie, stay where you are!’ he hollers, ‘ _do not move_! You hear me?’

‘I’m on a rock,’ she assures him, and he hears the soft _shing_ of her shuriken spinning in her hand, ‘I’m not going to move. Red’s gone!’

And he’s got one of Vincent’s monster buddies roaming around and he can’t see a fucking thing. Amazing. Great.

He uses where Yuffie was, and where her voice had echoed, to try and make something resembling progress, but he can’t see the floor, never mind two feet in front of his face, and Death Gigas is rattling around somewhere out there.

‘Why now?’ Yuffie asks him, and he turns, re-orientates himself. ‘He has such good control of those things, why now?’

‘Sephiroth, ennit?’ Cid grunts back, and nearly trips over a rock.

‘Uh, guys?’

‘Oh, for _fuck sake_!’ he spits, ‘the fuck do you _want_ , ShinRa rat?’

‘Very mature. Rufus is in the chamber with the Turks and Tifa, Cloud is – in trouble.’

‘Yes, well, as you can _not_ see, I am a little bit busy!’

A hand grabs his arm and he nearly stabs it, but it’s only the fucking robot.

‘I’m a robot,’ he says, ‘Sephiroth’s mind games don’t work on me. He’s distracting you all. He got Nanaki, he’s going to give Cloud the Black Materia.’

‘Oh, for fuck sake!’ Cid repeats, with more emphasis and volume. ‘I am _sick_ of this bullshit! Go get Yuffie, you waste of electronics. I’m going to try and get that fucking zombie.’

And just as quickly as it had come, it goes. The darkness disappears, and they’re all three feet from each other, except Yuffie, who is about six feet above their heads, and Cid has no idea how she got up there.

Death Gigas is rattling around on the next platform, swinging wildly at nothing, and when you can see him, he’s not quite so terrifying.

‘Oi!’ Cid hollers, ‘monster mash! Over here, come on. Calm your tits, threat’s gone!’

Death Gigas wheels round, fist smashing into a pillar and knocking it into pieces. Cid stares at it, it stares back, and Cid sniffs.

‘I’m waiting,’ he says.

Yuffie bounces down next to him, and Death Gigas lurches towards her, one step, two, and then it falls away, letting Vincent come back. He hits the stone, and Cid exhales, rubs his face.

‘Come on,’ he says, elbows Yuffie. ‘Give me a hand, he’ll be down for a good ten minutes.’

They manage to get Vincent upright, Cid taking most of the weight, and they start dragging him towards the plateau where they’d been waiting when Cait does a little jig atop the Mog.

‘Guys!’ he exclaims, ‘guys we need to move! We need to go!’

‘Why?’ Yuffie asks, ‘what’s happened?’

‘Cloud’s given Sephiroth the Black Materia! Something bad’s happening, I can’t see it but it’s there. We need to go! There’s an airship outside!’

‘An airship?’ Cid demands. ‘Come on, kid, help me drag this fucker out of here.’

The rocks start falling apart around them as they move, and as they hit the path out, Vincent stirs, comes back enough that Yuffie can safely grab his hand and drag him behind her. Cid leaves them to it, sprinting down the path after Cait Sith, who is somehow _faster_ than a grown man, and they burst out of the cave at the same time as Rufus comes out of a different opening, Tifa and Barret hot on his heels.

‘Hojo,’ Vincent snarls, and Yuffie punches him in the arm.

‘Not the time!’ she snipes, and she takes off, overtaking them all to get to the airship.

It’s the _Highwind_ , and Cid almost trips over his feet skidding to a stop to gawk at it.

‘Later,’ Vincent says, grabbing his arm, which Cid thinks is fair. If he has to put aside his bullshit for now, Cid can too. That’s fair.

‘You gonna let me pilot her?’ he asks Rufus as they board, and Rufus snorts.

‘You must think I’m stupid,’ he replies, which Cid doesn’t think would be fair to respond to.

It doesn’t really matter if he gets to pilot her, in the end. There’s more important things to think about, like the fact that there’s a fucking _dragon_ digging itself out of the ground.

‘WEAPON,’ Hojo says, like they should know what that is.

‘The fuck is that?’ Cid asks, and Hojo looks at him like he’s shit on his shoe. As he walks away, Cid grunts, ‘be like that, then.’

Hojo doesn’t dignify him with a response.

The WEAPON, whatever it is, is not alone, but it’s also not happy. Turning to pinpoint them with some ruby red eyes, the same kind of red as Vincent’s, and if Cid had the time to think about it, he might actually make some kind of connection about something, but he doesn’t have time. He grabs the railing as the WEAPON gears up and screeches, and whatever’s in that screech rocks the _Highwind_ , sends the ship spiralling. It’s only Barret having half a brain that stops Tifa going overboard, and that’s good, because she must have hit her head or something.

‘Fucking hell,’ Cid says, as the ship is rocked again by another explosion of energy from the crater, ‘we’d – let’s get in.’

Barret scoops Tifa up like a doll, and they head inside. One of the crewmen, flushing in embarrassment at being faced down by Captain Highwind himself, points them down a corridor to the medical room, like Cid doesn’t know his way around his own shit.

‘Bootlicker,’ he hisses as they pass, ‘loyal my fuckin’ _arse_.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Barret replies, utterly disinterested. ‘Man’s gotta work.’

‘Man’s gonna get my boot up his arse. See how he works then. My ship ain’t enough, they have to steal my crew, too.’

* * *

Rufus finds them in the medical room a half-hour later. Yuffie and Vincent have joined them, and Yuffie is doubled over a bowl, even though she’s taken enough tranquilizers to down a Heavy Tank. Tifa is safely in a bed, Barret resting a hand on her head. Cid has opened one of the portholes and is smoking out of it.

‘Well,’ Rufus says on entering, ‘aren’t you a sorry bunch?’

‘Eat a dick,’ Yuffie spits, and then literally spits into the bowl.

‘Charming. Well, either way, thanks to your _friend_ , you have now successfully summoned Meteor, so congratulations are in order. You’ve released the WEAPONs, and you’ve created a world-ending event. You really are just magnificent.’

Cid blows a stream of smoke out of the window.

‘What do you want?’ he asks.

‘Mostly, I want you to stay out of the way,’ he says, ‘you’ve done enough damage. It’s time ShinRa took over and resolved the issue properly.’

‘Because you did such a wonderful job of that in the first place!’ Barret exclaims, gesturing wildly around the room. ‘Starting all this SOLDIER bullshit was why Sephiorth went fucking nuts!’

‘Yes, well, you can blame my father for that,’ Rufus says, dismissing it the way you might dismiss a poor choice at the races. ‘Regardless of what my father did, and who hypothetically caused all of this, the fact remains that ShinRa is the only company in the position to do something about it.’

‘I’m sure,’ Barret snorts.

Rufus ignores him.

‘We will have you imprisoned,’ he says, ‘for your own personal safety, at Junon. Then we will decide what to do with you afterward. For now, our priority is stopping the WEAPONs.’

And he swishes out of the room, leaving them to snigger and sniffle and avoid looking at each other.

‘Right,’ Cid says, flicking the cigarette out of the window, ‘first thing’s first. We’re not letting that motherfucker take all the glory for shit he caused.’

‘Agreed,’ Vincent nods.

‘Uh-huh,’ Yuffie groans.

‘Yes,’ Red huffs, shaking himself out.

‘Obviously,’ Barret agrees.

‘When me an’ Shera designed this beauty, we made sure there were lifeboats. We have an escape route. We just have to get to them. Leave it with me. I know this ship like the back of my hand.’

* * *

ShinRa have jettisoned the buggies Cid had made sure the ship had, leaving them with no way to safely remove themselves before landing.

‘Fuck sake,’ he grunts, staring at the empty bay where the ships should have been.

‘Captain?’ comes a voice behind him, and he whirls.

One of the crew, looking sheepish, but not embarrassed.

‘I’m doing my job,’ he says, holding up a mop. ‘The parachutes are still in the cargo hold.’

Cid eyes him. The crewman shrugs.

‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘keep yourself aboard. I’ll need you for the mutiny later.’

The crewman snorts, and carries on mopping.

* * *

‘Guys,’ Cid announces, kicking the door open, parachutes in hand, ‘I have a plan.’


	5. A Smile, A Laugh, A Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shera comes to know the Captain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some non-explicit sexual awkwardness because these kids, I tell ya.
> 
> This is a loooooong chapter, over 10k! Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Shera is twenty-one and fresh out of training. She’s a qualified electrical engineer, and she’s top of her class. One of the best engineers to have come through the ShinRa-sponsored training, she knows that much. Top five, easily. She’s an aerospace specialist, and proved it with her entrance exam, successfully pulling apart and redesigning a ShinRa biplane, and within eighteen months, her redesign had been spotted in one of those godawful propaganda movies Heidegger had commissioned to make everyone more comfortable about the whole Wutai business, which had _still_ been going on. So she’d been good, and ShinRa had only made her better.

Which is why, when they ask if she wants to get involved with the space program, Palmer sidling up to her at graduation, all grease and smarmy charm, she leaps at the opportunity.

‘What’s his face,’ Palmer says, waving a hand, ‘that boy wonder from Wutai, he’s our pilot.’

She remembers, even years later, wrinkling her nose at him. ‘Who?’ she asks, because she’d paid _no attention_ to the war.

‘Oh, what’s his name?’ Palmer asks himself, clicking his fingers and tapping his temple. She’d hated him then, and she hates him now. ‘H – H – H-something. Highwind! The Highwind boy.’

‘ _Cid Highwind_?’ she gapes, because yeah, actually. Yeah, of course it would be Cid Highwind.

He’s the _greatest_ pilot ShinRa have ever had, and they’re aware enough of it to admit it, which means he’s _better_. He’s the blue-eyed, golden hair wonder of the air force, and he’s been very quiet about what had gone on in the war, but he’s only had good things to say about the planes, which is good, because they’re the ones she designed at fifteen.

‘You know him?’ Palmer asks, disinterested, like he couldn’t care. She finds out very quickly that Palmer _doesn’t_ care about the Captain, any more than the Captain cares about him. They tolerate each other, because they’re working towards a common goal, but neither of them would care if the other died.

‘Not personally,’ Shera says, and fiddles with her dress.

Her parents had bought it especially for her, and she feels very underdressed for a graduation now, with everyone around her looking sparkly and pristine and obviously they knew ShinRa would be scouting for talent to employ. But she likes it, mustard yellow with flowers and she’d even tried to do something nice with her hair instead of a ponytail, but it’s not the bouffant styles she can see the other girls wearing. Okay, so most of them are the girlfriends of the male graduates, but even so.

‘Oh,’ Palmer says, ‘well, you’ll get to know him. I’ll tell him his reputation precedes him. He’s a wild card, mind. He forced the last engineer to quit.’

(In truth, the whole team had done nothing except be themselves, and that had been enough for the ShinRa bootlicker to quit. Shera is not a ShinRa bootlicker, and as such, becomes a part of the team and the family very, very quickly, to the point the Captain _aborts the launch_ for her. But that’s twenty-four rockets away yet.)

‘I understand,’ she says.

‘If you pack your bags tonight,’ Palmer says, ‘we can have you shipped out in the morning.’

* * *

So she arrives at the launch pad and she makes a first impression, for which the Captain commends her over dinner that evening, and that’s that. She’d played it as cool as she could, because Shera doesn’t care about boys, but Cid is –

Well, he’s got eyes the colour of the sky, and his hair’s bleached by the sun, and he’s got freckles on his shoulders and Shera isn’t one to swear, but _fuck_.

She holds it together until after dinner when he says goodnight, and his trousers should be illegal for how well they hold his backside, and she’s not a swooning dame clutching at her pearls, but she does fan herself, a little. She does exhale once, a long drawn-out sort of sigh.

‘He does that,’ comes a lady’s voice, and Shera flinches, whirls round.

Reine, the lady owner of the Inn, which is the only solid building on site at the moment, is wonderful, and Shera will count her as a close friend until the day she dies, but right now she is _mortified_ , and she hastens to cover it up with affected nonchalance.

‘Does what? Who?’ she asks, but it comes out too quickly, and Reine, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, smiles.

‘Exists,’ she says. ‘I don’t suppose you could help me with the dishes, if you aren’t too tired?’

Shera isn’t too tired, and a distraction is welcome. Reine fills her in on the more important aspects of the little collective forming here. Don’t tell the Captain to stop smoking, John is left-handed, so don’t try to work to the left of him, Livas comes from over the mountains in the Nibel area and he sounds like it. There’s a few monsters lurking around the area, but don’t be too afraid, most of the boys here served so they’re all capable of dealing with it. They’re also all boys who are mostly unchecked in day-to-day, so banter will be a bit close to the quick.

‘Don’t be afraid of standing up for yourself,’ Reine tells her, ‘they’ll appreciate a bit of backbone. The last engineer, he was – well, he’s not here now.’

‘I heard the Captain ran him out.’

Reine snorts. ‘He ran himself out. Absolute coward. Wouldn’t disobey any order, no matter how anal.’

Shera, who grew up understanding that order, and instruction, and doing as you were told were the safest ways to get through life, wrinkles her nose at this. But the first few orders from ShinRa, who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, and promptly causes Rocket No. 2 to barely get airborne, well. That tells her everything she needs to know.

After she’s done the dishes, she goes to her room, politely made up for her by Reine, free for her use as long as she’s on the program, and she sits on her bed.

‘Fuck,’ she whispers into her hands. ‘ _Fuck_.’

* * *

She’s been at the launch site for about three weeks when she first begins to daydream. This isn’t to say she’s never had a daydream in her life, because she was a kid once, and kids daydream all the time, about all sorts of things. No, no, this is a specific daydream, and it catches her off-guard the first time, because she’s not even really sure what she’s daydreaming about.

Oh, she knows what it’s about, of course, because she’s got that much about her, but the _meaning_ of it. Because, to be honest, what does having a good old daydream about the way the Captain lights a match _mean_? Besides that he’s got a great curve of muscle in his forearm, and he’s got longer fingers than you’d think with the work gloves he wears, and he’s got a way of curling the match into his palm to light his cigarette that makes the tendons on the back of his hand stand out, and the rattle of his watch when he shakes the match out – it’s all very vague, but the image is so crisp it’s like watching a recording of it over and over in her head.

And it’s not like he does it all the time, only when he’s misplaced (lost) his lighter, which doesn’t happen often. This means it’s rare to see him use a match, and she understands that rarer events are more memorable. But still. His hands, and by extension his forearms, well. They’re dangerous.

He laughs, and she blinks herself back to where she should be, which is holding a bunch of live wires dangerously close to each other. She glances up, cheeks hot, and sees him perching on the scaffolding, boot heels and the weight of his neck the only thing stopping him falling off and plummeting a good twenty feet to the ground, cigarette curled into his palm and the other hand adjusting his goggles. He’s not looking, which is for the best, and she takes a calming breath. (It’s not calming at all, it’s longing, and she knows it.) He’s all long lines and sharp jaw, white teeth with his smile, and such bright, bright eyes.

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, frustrated with herself for being so distracted by a _man_ , and forces her attention back onto the wires. This is her _job_ , after all, she’s here to make the rocket’s electronics work, and she’s going to damn well do it. The Captain wants to see the stars, and it’s her job to make that happen. That’s all there is to it. No amount of long fingers and flicking wrists is going to make her lose her job.

Not yet, anyway.

* * *

She doesn’t cry until about that third week, when the homesickness really hits her. She gets teary at dinner, one of the boys talking about how his sister has had a baby, and he’ll go see his niece at the first opportunity, but it’s not until someone uses the word “lonely” that it really hits her.

With a hiccup and a froggish “excuse me,” Shera leaves the table, and tries her best to cry quietly in the corridor, because she doesn’t think she can make it to the toilet to cry there instead.

A few minutes of pitiful weeping pass, and then a hand touches her back, and she startles. It’s only John, the way you say it’s only a bear.

‘Hey,’ he says, gentle, all warm eyes and open smile. ‘Homesick?’

She nods, pathetically, and wipes her eyes with her fingers.

‘I understand,’ he tells her, and draws her into a hug. ‘We’re a long way from everywhere here.’

She nods against his shirt, and cries until she doesn’t have anything left.

When she’s done, and has finished hiccupping, he peels away and cups her face with his hands.

‘Tell me what will help you,’ he says, ‘if you need to go home, I’ll talk to the Captain.’

She shakes her head. ‘No, I – I’ve been away from home since I was fifteen, I’m fine. I can – it’s fine. It’s just. Lonely.’

John nods. ‘You know Reine and I are here at all times,’ he tells her. ‘We’re practically these idiots parents. You know she’s only hear because I didn’t want to get scurvy?’

She shakes her head again, his hands still on her cheeks. He brushes his hands over her scalp, threads his fingers through her ponytail, looks at her so gently she wonders if she’s fragile.

‘Yeah,’ he says, with a nod and a laugh. ‘Rocked up here, and they’re all eating instant noodles and granola bars. I don’t think they’d have known what a vegetable was if you hit them with one. I have never been afraid for my life before, and I served in the ground army.’

Shera stares at him.

‘Instant noodles?’ she gawks, because she has never _touched_ instant noodles, always made sure she ate well in the Institute.

‘You’d best believe it. I don’t think I’ve seen Reine as cross as I did the day she threw the packet at the Captain because he dared tell her they were real food. He’s such a little shit, he loves fruit, he’s just stubborn.’

‘He’s very stubborn,’ Shera agrees.

‘Anyway, that’s why we have the Inn, and why we have dinner here every night. Parents, I tell you.’

‘You don’t have children?’ she asks, and John smiles sadly.

‘It was a bad birth,’ he tells her, and shrugs. ‘Wasn’t meant to be, and that’s that. Anyway, come on, I saw what Reine was making for dessert.’

The Captain is studying her when she returns to the table, and she bites her lips, refuses to look at him. He kicks her under the table, and she leaps a mile.

‘Be up before dawn,’ he tells her, and she frowns at him.

‘Why?’

‘Just do it, four-eyes.’

She purses her lips at him, but he ignores her, and so she has to get up before dawn. He’s waiting at the desk, his goggles over his eyes, and a helmet in his hand, which he tosses at her when he sees her.

‘C’mon,’ he says, ‘I’ll show you my baby.’

His baby is a bi-plane, and she recognises the model, stands there and stares at it.

‘I built it,’ he says, proud, ‘had to adjust the blueprint a bit, but she’s a good girl, love her. Come on, it’s nearly sun-up.’

She’s never been in an aircraft before; she’s been in cars and trains and ferries, but never flown, even though it’s the literal basis of her career.

‘Captain,’ she says as he brushes her inner thigh buckling her into the rear-seat.

‘Oh, shut up,’ he says, ‘and don’t piss in your britches.’

She understands, the moment they’re airborne, what it is about the sky. The Captain turns back to grin at her, and she grins back, and doesn’t want to return to the ground.

* * *

‘So where you from?’ the Captain asks, about two months into Shera’s working with them on the project.

It’s lunchtime, and Reine and one of the other wives have made them up sandwiches, and fresh cake, and brought them fresh fruit. Most of the boys, who have been up here with them since seven in the morning, tell him he’s stark raving mad to have a working lunch, and they disappear down to the ground. Shera stays up with him and a plate of food and a thermos of tea, and they sit with their legs dangling over the edge of the scaffolding looking out over the grasslands.

She’s got a mouthful of bread when he asks her, so she covers her mouth with one hand, circles her other as if it’ll encourage her to chew faster, and when she’s swallowed she says, ‘there’s a little village not far from Mideel. I grew up there, but I’ve spent the last few years in Midgar, with the Technological Institute.’

Cid nods. ‘Midgar makes you feel like you don’t come from anywhere.’

‘It does,’ she agrees, and they say nothing for a while.

She sneaks glances at him from under her lashes, sat next to her with his shirt off to get the sun, squinting into the sun and shoving three cherry tomatoes into his mouth in one go like a savage. He’s sweaty, smelling more of it than soap now, and his hair is damp, his arms greasy and his fingernails black, but he’s – he’s –

She looks at her lap, at the skyline in the opposite direction, at John and Reine having an enthusiastic debate about the laundry outside the Inn.

‘I don’t know what they’re arguing about,’ she says, ‘I’ll take it down to town in the morning, I already said I would, since I’m going anyway.’

‘The fuck you going to town for?’ he asks.

‘I need to go to the post office,’ she says, ‘see if my parents have replied to my letter.’

‘I’ll drive you, in the morning,’ he says, ‘remind me, ‘fore I get up here, and I’ll take you in.’

She feels the blush rising in her cheeks, going down her neckline, and then he pats himself down, arches to dig into his pocket for his lighter.

‘Thanks,’ she murmurs, into a cocktail sausage.

‘Ah, don’t mention it. Gotta keep you happy, eh? In case you go running off and fuck all this up.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ she assures him, and the heat in her face when he looks at her, she doesn’t think she can blame it on the sun. ‘In it for the long haul, Captain. I’ve nearly got the wiring sorted, I think we can probably get her airborne soon.’

‘ShinRa will find a way to fuck with it,’ the Captain replies, and when she purses her lips, still so naïve about what ShinRa are capable of, he offers her a wink, and his attention turns to his cigarette.

Their fingers brush when they both reach for an apple, and both of their hands flinch away. She chances a glance at him; his ears are red. He chances a glance at her; her cheeks are pink.

* * *

Before she left for school, she went into the attic to find a suitcase her mother was sure was up there, and she found a box labelled ‘photographs.’ She’d never seen it before, and she pulls it down, curious, because she’s fifteen and doesn’t know to leave things alone.

‘Ma?’ she calls, ‘what’s this?’

Her mother comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands, and she goes a little grey seeing the box in her daughter’s hands.

‘Oh,’ she says, ‘let’s – let’s wait for your dad to get home.’

Shera does not want to wait, but the look on her mother’s face tells her something very serious.

‘Okay,’ she says, and goes to finish packing, though her mind is on the box of photographs on the coffee table.

Her parents sit her down after dinner, and they tell her that the photos are of her sister.

‘You were young,’ says her mother, ‘when she died. Just about to turn six.’

‘Why don’t I remember her?’

‘She was never here,’ her father tells her, looking through the photos sadly.

Shera looks at the photo in her hand. It’s of a pretty woman with long dark hair, cut straight across her brow, pulled back into the same ponytail Shera’s always worn, her ears sticking out the same way. Her eyes are darker, but brighter, full of a fun that Shera’s never really had. Shera was always a stay at home kind of kid, too busy reading books on space and the stars and car manuals to really care about things like birthday parties and pranking the neighbours. The woman in the photograph is wearing a lab coat, and she’s stood next to a handsome man in a smart suit, his hair artfully tousled. She looks at the woman, looking at the man from the corner of her eyes.

‘Did she get married?’ she asks, because she thinks that’s what love looks like.

‘Not to that man, no,’ her mother sighs, and runs a finger across the photo she’s holding. ‘She – worked for ShinRa, and she was all over the place, researching all sorts of things. I think she came home for one Eventide, back when you were just starting to walk. She looked, worried. I remember she was so worried. She spent almost all of the holiday on the phone to her boss. She had you on her hip, and you were besotted with her, you cried for days when she left again. It was the last time I think we really saw her.’

‘And she’s dead?’

‘That’s what they said. They sent a chap from the company to tell us. We – we were never allowed to see her body. We couldn’t even bury her.’

‘Why do you never talk about her?’ Shera asks, and feels something like anger creeping up her throat. ‘Why are there no pictures of her? Why is it that I don’t remember hearing her name come out of your mouths _once_?’

‘Shera,’ her father starts, and she leaps her feet, throws the photographs at him.

‘Shut up! Shut up, you don’t get to – my sister is _dead_ , and I _never_ knew her!’

She storms out of the room and refuses to leave her bedroom until it’s time for her to get her transport to Midgar. She says goodbye to her parents, and refuses to cry until she’s alone, three days later, in the shower and tired, so very, very tired. She misses her sister, in a way she didn’t think she’d ever miss her.

She goes to the Science Department on her day off, hovers in the stairwell, and doesn’t know whether she wants to go in or not. She’s there so long that she hears voices coming up the stairs, talking about how the lecture on the Omega Reports had been _so_ interesting, and how they think it’s just _typical_ of a male-dominated society to discredit female scientists that have been through trauma, and Shera doesn’t know what to do.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ one them asks, a punky little thing with close-cropped hair and several piercings in one ear.

‘Yeah, I – I’m lost,’ she says, and the scientists nod, disappear inside.

In the end, she doesn’t go in, calls herself a coward, and disappears back to engineering. She never goes near the Science Department again.

* * *

‘He likes her,’ Livas says, and Shera pauses.

She’d gone to the bathroom after dinner, and the Captain had stepped outside for a cigarette, and naturally that means that the rest of them have chance to gossip. Now, instead of walking back in, she hesitates behind the door, stands there and listens.

‘Livas, you’re full of _shit_ ,’ John snorts, and she bites her lip.

The worst part of all this is their _language_. She’s not a prude or a square or whatever, it’s just _so constant_. When she called her parents, she’d told them about it, about the language and how it was just _awful_ , and her mother had been horrified, her father amused. They told her to treat them kindly, let her work speak for itself, and they’d probably come around. If anything, they’ve gotten worse, but she can’t bring herself to tell her parents that.

‘No, he does. Have you seen him? Honestly, the next time it’s nice out there, look at him when she’s in shorts. He’s got one eye on her arse, and one on what he’s doing. He’s gone on her.’

‘She likes him,’ Reine offers, because Reine is obviously a traitor. ‘I don’t think she realises it yet, but she’s sweet on him.’

John groans into his hands. He’s not even got any level of command over this lot, but it often feels, to Shera at least, like he’s the only halfway sensible one of the lot of them.

‘So what do you suggest?’ he asks, in the kind of tone that sounds like he might ask them to tell him to throw himself in front of a train. ‘We set them up?’

‘Fuck yeah,’ Livas snorts, ‘just toss ‘em in a closet with a couple condoms.’

‘Livas,’ Reine chides, ‘Shera’s a good girl, she at least deserves _dinner_ first.’

‘You see the way he looks at her, he’d make her into dinner, if you know what I mean.’

Shera has absolutely no idea what he means, and decides that she does not want to know, and therefore now is the time to re-enter the room. The rest of the table goes very quiet, and a few ears are a little bit pink, but she pretends like she didn’t hear her name and condom within ten words of each other, taking her seat and turning discussion to what groceries they need to get.

Later, though. Later, she thinks about what Livas had said, about closets and condoms and she can’t look the Captain in the eye the next morning, too embarrassed about having even considered thinking about what’s under his trousers, never mind what he might be able to do with it. This again, isn’t because she’s a prude, but rather – she’s never been _interested_ in anything of that nature. Boys in general had never really appealed to her, and she’s not really interested in being interested in one now. Sure, the Captain is – well. He’s nice to look at, and listen to, when he’s not swearing so much, and he’s got a good brain in his head, when he bothers to use it. And he’s nice, underneath the brashness. And he’s got good hands. But she doesn’t really think about it anymore than that, because it feels – rude. To think about what’s underneath someone’s clothes without their permission.

So she doesn’t. Resolutely not.

* * *

(About two weeks later, Cid nearly falls off the scaffolding because he leans too far looking at her arse when she bends over, but nobody’s going to say _anything_ to _anyone_ , does he make himself _clear_?)

* * *

Shera’s twenty-second birthday comes and goes without fanfare. Rocket No. 3 is given the go-ahead after Rocket No. 2 spectacularly combusted thanks to ShinRa’s insistence on changing the fuel type at the last minute, which meant all the work Shera had put on the electrics had been for nothing. She doesn’t get angry; the Captain does, but she just gets the blueprints out and starts again.

The morning of her birthday, it rains. It usually rains on her birthday, and she’s not too bothered. She washes, and dresses, and she goes downstairs to find the Captain at the bar with Reine on the other side, laughing at something he’s said. He’s smiling, and scratching his neck, and she hovers for a second, just looking at him. He’s beautiful when he smiles, a proper smile, with dimples in his cheeks and a slight pinkness to his ears.

‘There she is!’ Reine exclaims, ‘we were just talking about you!’

She blinks, and slinks into the bar, fingers knotting and unknotting.

‘Good things, I hope,’ she says.

‘Horrible,’ the Captain assures her. ‘Thought I’d come pick your brains about the next rocket, since you ain’t got shit-all else to do until we start building.’

She laughs, breathy, and looks at her feet.

‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘of course. Let me have breakfast first?’

‘Fuck you asking permission for?’ he snorts, ‘I ain’t your fuckin’ dad.’

‘I’ll toast that,’ Reine snorts, and the Captain gives her an ugly look, but there’s little malice in it.

So she spends most of the day in the Captain’s cabin, sat on uncomfortable chairs, arm-to-arm, bent over blueprints and talking about the rocket, and he lights his cigarettes with matches, and she can feel the heat of his skin against her. He’s in a t-shirt, because it’s warm but not sunny, and she can smell the soap on him, and it’s not his heartbeat she can hear, but hers, but it’d be nice to think his was beating as hard. (It is.) He laughs at some of the things she says, and compliments her brain, the depths of her thinking. He compliments her work ethic, tells her he’s never seen someone devote so much time to thinking about the little things.

‘It’s the little things that’ll get you up there,’ she tells him, ‘and it’s my job to do it.’

‘I like you,’ he tells her, and when he looks across at her, their shoulders are touching, and so, nearly, are their noses. ‘You can stay.’

She licks her lips, swallows thickly, takes a shaky breath. For a moment, he lingers, and his eyes are _so blue_ , then he laughs and straightens up, and she’s not sure he didn’t know what he was doing.

(He very carefully doesn’t get up for a good ten minutes.)

* * *

‘Do you _ever_ wear shoes?’ he asks her one evening, when she goes outside to find him lying in the grass looking at the stars.

She lies down next to him, careful to not be so close as to be touching, but she can feel his warmth, and looks at the stars, too.

‘Not when I can help it,’ she says, ‘I like to feel the ground beneath me.’

‘Huh.’

‘I think we’re onto something, with this next rocket,’ she says. ‘I think we’ll get it into space, and then we’ll be able to trial an animal.’

He hums. ‘Then it’ll be me.’

‘Then it’ll be you. First man in space, must be scary.’

‘Nah. The fighting in Wutai was scary, I suppose. This is – this is the dream.’

She forgets, sometimes, that he served. He’d have had to be young, he’s only barely older than her, so he’d have been – been.

‘I was seventeen,’ he says, slowly, and she glances over at him, frowning. ‘I enlisted as soon as I could, wanted to be in the sky. Figured it was a good way to get my license to fly, and then I could – I hadn’t thought much further than that. Then it was the war, and I couldn’t do a lot.’

She nods, and rests her fingers across her belly. ‘I saw the news reports, your name was everywhere.’

‘Best pilot in ShinRa,’ he snorts, ‘wasn’t hard, given the way they were flying. Fucking waste of space, the lot of them.’

She supposes that this is true; she knows she’s the best engineer of her class, and it’s not hard to outdo most of them. She was smarter than most of them at fifteen, never mind twenty-two.

They lie out there for most of the night, talking about everything and nothing. She learns a lot about the Captain in that evening, and at some point, the back of their hands touch, and don’t move apart. The sun is just beginning to turn the sky grey when the Captain finally has enough and sits up.

‘S’pose you’d better get in,’ he says, ‘’fore Reine thinks I’ve kidnapped you.’

‘I’m not a child,’ she says.

‘Woman-napped,’ he corrects, and she laughs.

‘Abducted,’ she tells him, soft, ‘and it’s only that if I don’t want to go.’

‘Huh?’

But she doesn’t clarify it, just gets to her feet, and pads back across the grass to the Inn, refusing to look back, able to feel the weight of his eyes on her back.

* * *

It’s around the time they launch Rocket No. 10 that she finds the _magazine_. The routine they’ve fallen into is an easy one, and nobody really cares about Shera going into their cabins any more, because she only goes to grab the laundry bags, tossing them into the truck the Captain had procured for her after being quite frankly _irritated_ that ShinRa hadn’t seen fit to give her one – and for fuck sake, he’d had to teach her to drive, because apparently they hadn’t seen fit to do that either – and off she’d go, taking everything to get washed.

And for the most part, she only really finds Gil and bits of rocket – nuts and bolts and screws and the odd tube of glue – though on one memorable occasion a strip of condoms that she returned to the owner without saying a word, which is what you sort of expect to find in a bunch of rowdy boys’ pockets. The Captain’s pockets are always empty, and she doesn’t know how, because she sees him put more things in them than she does see him take them out, but she’s not going to curse herself by bringing it up. Today, however, as she’s pulling the laundry out of the bag to separate it, she comes across a double-page spread of a young lady with her legs spread very wide indeed and a gentleman’s hand very squarely between them. A few of his fingers are – well.

Shera doesn’t scream or throw the magazine like it’s a particularly terrifying spider. She stares at it as the image takes a few moments to process and then she yelps, flips it shut and buries it underneath the bag. Thank the _planet_ she’s alone in the laundromat, because her face is on fire and her heart is beating wildly and she didn’t even think that _of course_ magazines would exist. She knows that boys – and girls, no need to be judgemental – like that kind of thing. She’s got no time for it, which is why she didn’t really put much thought into how much she’s been thinking about the Captain’s fingers lately, but that’s not to say other people can’t. And well, she supposes if you’ve got some red blood in you, it’s probably pretty lonely in Rocket Town. It’s not like there’s an active social life in the place.

She’s not judging, but she absolutely ignores the magazine until it’s time to put everything away and then she – well, she’s not thinking clearly, and she puts it in _her_ laundry bag instead of the rightful owner’s, and well, it’s not something to think about.

* * *

She’s unpacking her laundry later, after dinner and everyone’s gone to their cabins, and she’s been terrorised by the Captain all afternoon, because he is _adamant_ his lighter is gone, and it’s so stressful this rocket building business, and she’s not entirely sure he wasn’t just lighting matches for something to do with his hands, but now she’s seen what fingers can _do_.

So she’s unpacking, and she finds the magazine, and she just stops. Holds it in her hands. Really, she should go and give it back, because it’s not hers, and she doesn’t _want_ it. But there’s a pretty lady on the cover in a fetching bikini, with dark, beckoning eyes, and a finger curling at the reader, and – and – Shera supposes it can’t hurt to look. Right?

She’s an adult, and they haven’t devolved to dorm-game truth or dare nonsense yet, but she reckons it’s only a matter of time, and she knows she’s the only one in the town who hasn’t _dated_ , so it can’t hurt to be. Abreast. Of the information. At the very least, she might be able to make it sound like a convincing lie.

Which is absolutely a reasonable reaction to holding a dirty magazine in her hands.

So she makes sure all her laundry is put away, and she’s washed her face and brushed her teeth and her door is _locked_ before putting the side-light on and climbing into bed to at the very least take notes. They’re just bodies – pretty ones, sure, but bodies – and she’s seen them before. She has one, after all! And she does her best to be clinical about it, because they’re photographs, and she doesn’t know these people, or have any investment in their relationship, but oh – oh, okay, _that’s_ what that looks like. And how those parts fit together. Oh, okay.

She gets back to the double-page spread of the gentleman’s fingers in a very interesting place, and she finds herself thinking, without really meaning to, of the Captain’s hands. She knows now, from him having grabbed her arm several times, and her thigh that one time to stop her falling when she’d overbalanced, and just from the accidental brushes of fingers that happen when you’re passing food and tools and such, that he has warm hands. And they’re rough, because of course they are. They’re warm, and they’re rough, and they’re strong, and she reckons they’d fit really nicely if they were where that gentleman’s hands were.

At which point she slams the magazine shut and tells herself to behave.

* * *

The next morning, the Captain still hasn’t found his lighter, and the first time he lights a match, she _squeaks_ , and she has to pretend like she didn’t, even though he’s looking at her with a raised eyebrow and half a smile, cigarette halfway to his mouth and match still burning between his fingers. He shakes it out, and she can feel the heat in her face, which is _nothing_ compared to the rush of heat she feels behind the button of her shorts, coiling tight between her hips.

‘You comin’ down with something?’ he asks, scratches the back of his head.

She clears her throat, even though her heart is pounding in her ears, a very similar pulse to the throb between her legs, and she smiles.

‘No, no, just – forgot to brush my teeth, is all!’

And she scurries off, back to the Inn, where she had already brushed her teeth, but at least it’s not near him.

Not that it matters because he’s chain-smoking today, bothered by something that he doesn’t tell her about, but each and every single cigarette is lit by a _fucking_ match, and she isn’t quite sure what to do with herself by the third time he does it. She’s sure she’s going mad, but it’s not like she can _admit_ to going mad because he’s smoking, so instead she surprises both of them by snapping at him over something absolutely inconsequential, a wrong nut, or the wrong size of spanner, and it takes them both back.

For a moment, they stand – well, she’s kneeling, having been doubled over trying to get under a panel of the rocket to get at a wire, and he’s about a foot in front of her, hands in his pockets – in total silence, staring at each other. His eyebrows crease, and then his eyes light up, and he _smiles_.

‘What?’ she demands.

‘You,’ he says, ‘never seen you have a backbone before. It’s – nice.’

‘Either help, or go away,’ she snips, because she’s too out of her depth to think of any decent comeback. Her face is on fire, her underwear is _wet_ , and she doesn’t know if she wants to punch that smile off his face, or grab him by the belt and drag him down to her.

‘I’ll help,’ he says, which is exactly what he doesn’t do, and she’ll buy him another lighter next time she’s in town.

* * *

She dreams of his hands, and his mouth, and other bits of him besides, and she doesn’t know how to look him in the eye.

* * *

The engineer the magazine belongs to comes by in the morning, the Captain holding his arm with white knuckles.

‘He’s got something to say,’ he grunts, and Shera blinks over her tea.

‘I don’t,’ she starts, but the Captain snaps at her to be quiet.

‘I’m sorry,’ the engineer yelps, and tries to yank his arm free, but the Captain’s grip is solid. ‘I left the magazine in my laundry and I’m sorry you had to see it.’

‘And?’ the Captain grunts.

‘I hope you can forgive me.’

Shera flushes, and the Captain’s grip loosens, just a little.

‘It’s okay,’ she says, flustered, ‘um. You’re a man, and men have those kind of interests, and I just – you could have left it closed.’ She laughs, a little, embarrassed. ‘But just. Don’t hide it where other people can see it next time!’

The engineer legs it as soon as the Captain lets him go, and the Captain flops into the chair next to her.

‘Fucking disgusting,’ he says, and helps himself to tea from the pot. ‘I tell you, hiding a magazine in your laundry. At least put it under your _mattress_.’

‘Is that where you hide yours?’ she asks, and he taps his temple. 

‘That’s for me to know,’ he tells her.

* * *

Six weeks of the match business go by. Six whole bloody weeks of him using matches for his cigarettes, even though she’s bought him three lighters, John’s given him a lighter, and Livas has told him that he’s destroying the planet. She gets used to her blood being a low thrum in her face at all times, and she gets used to dampness of her underwear, and she hates him, a little bit. Because he only seems to light a cigarette when she’s distracted by something else.

Eventually, after dinner one night in the sixth week, Reine calls him through into the kitchen, and they stay in there for a very long time. He returns to the table, sheepish, with a lighter in his hand.

‘They’re like _children_ ,’ she hears Reine saying later. ‘If she had pigtails, he’d be chasing her around trying to pull them.’

‘Is that was that was?’ John snorts. ‘I thought he was being a prick.’

‘He liked seeing her blush, so he says, didn’t think it was mean at all. Poor girl was about ready to melt.’

‘You never get like that with me,’ John says.

‘I do,’ Reine assures him, ‘I just have a better handle on it than she does.’

Shera wrinkles her nose and stands in front of the mirror that night, thinking very hard about the Captain’s hands and staring at herself until she stops blushing.

Not that it matters, because it becomes a blue moon event that he lights a cigarette with a match, which does wonders for her blood pressure. And her laundry bill.

* * *

She’s been with them for a year now, is about to turn twenty-three, and she’s not entirely sure she wants to leave.

Reine bakes her a cake, and presents it to her at dinner that evening.

‘What’s this for?’ she asks, because it’s not her birthday.

‘You’ve been here for a year,’ Reine says.

‘Fucking hell,’ Livas laughs, ‘that’s got to be a record for our engineers, none of them lasted six weeks!’

The Captain, sat opposite her, smiles and raises his glass to her, eyes on hers and so blue. She crosses her legs, and blushes at the toast they give her, which amounts pretty much to keeping the Captain out of trouble.

‘Oh, please,’ she laughs, waving them down, ‘I’m just doing my job. Congratulate me when we’ve got the Captain to the stars, and not a moment sooner.’

* * *

The first time they get a rocket to hit the atmosphere, he grabs her around the waist and spins her around. She squeals, laughs, and doesn’t protest when he doesn’t let go immediately. They’ve been doing _nothing_ except build the rockets. If it wasn’t for the team being as good as they are, if it wasn’t for the laughter they have, the easy nature, she thinks she’d have packed it in.

The Captain’s hands are on her arms, but he’s looking at the sky, at the trail the rocket left, and she looks at him, breathes deep. He’s putting weight on, a little bit, healthy muscle from good food and decent sleep, and she likes the warmth of the summer-gold stubble on his jaw. His smile is broad enough to be the sky, and when he turns it on her, her heart skips a beat. She wants to kiss him, and she probably could. But now is not the time, so she congratulates him, and they watch the rocket explode spectacularly into a thousand pieces.

* * *

A few weeks later, Rafa shows up. Rafa has been sent to them from ShinRa, from the desk of Palmer himself, and the Captain is alternately thrilled and disgusted that they’re sending more people now that they’ve got the rocket space-born.

‘Fucking asked for extra hands last year,’ he grunts when Rafa explains why he’s there, and then, ‘suppose it’s better late than never. Go see Shera, she’ll sort you out.’

Shera is in earshot, and looks at Rafa, and sighs. She does her best not to judge, because some of the nicest people she knows make terrible first impressions. John looks like he belongs in a rough bar in a Midgar slum with his shaved head and overgrown beard and muscles like a gorilla, but he’s the first at her door when he hears her crying from the homesickness. The Captain himself, a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking self-proclaimed dickhead, is possibly a man she could see herself falling in love with at some point, if he keeps going the way he is with the match-lighting and the secret, just-for-her smiles and such.

But Rafa is – Rafa is from Costa de Sol, and he looks like he left there yesterday, all sun-gold with the flouncy hair that she sees in the TV adverts, and he’s not got a lot of muscle, but he obviously works out, and he’s pretty enough. Even features and his eyebrows are very – tamed. Shera supposes girls are flocking to him, but she finds him too – attractive, to find him attractive.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘if you follow me, I’ll get you a room at the Inn.’

‘You’re Shera, right?’ he asks, grabbing his bag to hurry after her. He’s about the same height as her, and his legs are about the same length, so it’s not hard for him to catch up.

‘I am,’ she says.

‘I read your paper,’ he says, gushes. ‘On the aircraft before the war, and I studied your new designs, I’d love to talk to you about them, if we get a chance.’

She stumbles a step, and feels the blush in her ears.

‘You – know about that?’ she asks.

‘Of course I do!’ he laughs, all bright eyes and bushy tail. ‘It was incredible! And you were _fifteen_ , that was amazing! I heard your changes saved a few lives in the war.’

Shera snorts. A functioning ejector seat is the least of the things that were necessary in that war.

‘It was my entrance exam,’ she says, ‘there’s probably a lot wrong with the designs now.’

Rafa shrugs, and she holds the door to the Inn open for him.

‘It looked good to me,’ he says, and Shera ignores the raised eyebrow Reine gives her.

If she’d bothered to check her computer, she’d have known that Rafa was being sent on a purely observational basis, that she was wanted for quality assurance, to make sure that he was on track to graduation. But, given that the email had come from Palmer, which she ignored, and the follow up from the Institute, which got filtered out due to their inane content, she has no idea about the requirements.

What she does have an idea about is, the following morning, when she leads him to the rocket, and he’s chattering away a hundred miles an hour to her about everything and nothing, and she’s nodding along politely, is that the Captain is very short with her. He’s not obviously short, but he’s usually waiting for her to arrive, if he’s not at the door of the Inn, with fifteen new hare-brained schemes to both improve the rocket and annoy every other mechanic on the build, and this morning, he’s not. He’s already up the scaffolding, cigarette between his teeth, and he grunts at her as she clambers over tools to get to where she left off.

‘Captain,’ she says, ‘you need to me work on the oxygen monitors?’

‘Do what you fuckin’ want,’ he grunts back, and she blinks at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says, because she doesn’t know what she’s done, but she’s sorry for it all the same. ‘I’ll – get on with my work then.’

The atmosphere continues all day. The other crew are making light of Rafa’s appearance amongst them, happy enough to show him the ropes, and he talks their ears off too, but he hovers close to Shera most of the day, watching what she’s doing, asking questions, and she answers as best she can. By the end of the afternoon, though he has no reason to be there, the Captain is on the other side of the rocket, and ignores any questions she asks him, pretending to be so absorbed in his work that he doesn’t hear her. The packet of cigarette butts around him tells her a lot about how he’s feeling, and she purses her lips at him.

‘Is the Captain always like this?’ Rafa asks, and the Captain makes a horrifically disgusted noise, throws himself off the scaffolding.

John, somewhere between them, just sighs when Rafa cries out.

‘He’s like that,’ John assures him. ‘Highwind blood, he’s got the strongest knees out of any man alive.’

‘But it’s three stories!’

Shera pats his arm. ‘You get used to it.’

It becomes clear, the second day that Rafa is with them, that the Captain is not only ignoring her, but he’s actively _avoiding_ her. She doesn’t know what to do, because Rafa is _always there_ , attached to her ankle like a limpet, and she can’t shake him except to go to the bathroom and go to bed, and even then, he lingers at her doorway for several minutes until she has to tell him pointedly that she wants to go to sleep. And the Captain is refusing to talk to her, sitting the other end of the table at dinner, which frees up his usual seat opposite her for Rafa, who talks her ear off throughout dinner, and she politely responds, but can’t get away from him to start up another conversation.

A few more days go by. Rafa asks about his observations, and Shera shrugs, tells him he’ll have to take it up with his mentors, because she’s not a trainer, and suggests he talks to Livas; as second-in-command, he has more authority than her on these things, even if he isn’t an engineer.

By the end of the first week, it’s unbearable. The Captain hasn’t said more than an handful of words to her, and not more than two of them have been used together, which makes working with him virtually impossible. The atmosphere is tense, uncomfortable, and the mood of the team begins to drop. This isn’t to say they’re miserable, because they aren’t, they still laugh and joke and banter, but they’re missing two key characters in it all and it’s obvious. The Captain is miserable, overly dour and snappy, not just at Shera but at all of them. He refuses to even acknowledge Rafa’s existence, who takes it on the chin, because apparently he’d come forewarned that the Captain was, to put it delicately, a “character.”

Even so, Shera is getting tired of being ignored. She wakes one morning halfway through the second week, and opens her bedroom door to hear Rafa still snoring. Breathing a sigh of relief that makes her feel so very guilty, she steals downstairs and finds Reine in the kitchen, up to her elbows in flour.

‘I’m making some rolls,’ she says, ‘for you lot, as a treat. You’ve been working hard this week.’

‘You mean, we’ve been miserable and you’re giving them sugar to cheer them up,’ Shera replies, and Reine pauses, looks at her with a creased brow.

‘You look awful,’ she says, and Shera snorts, flops into the chair by the oven.

‘I feel awful,’ she says, ‘the Captain hasn’t spoken to me in over a week, and I’m – Reine, I don’t know what to _do_.’

Reine, who knows full-well what this all is, because the Captain had been sat in that chair last night with the same stricken expression, and he hadn’t been able to choke the words out, but Reine is not daft. She doesn’t tell Shera that, though.

Instead she says, ‘he’s not used to sharing his toys. He’s got competition for your affections.’

Shera splutters, and looks horrified. ‘No! No, I’m not – I don’t have any – I’m not _interested_ in him!’

‘In who?’ Reine asks, and Shera goes beet-red.

Her silence is tell enough, and Reine laughs.

‘Shera, you don’t have to be so innocent,’ she says, ‘you know you’re safe with me. And if you aren’t interested, just tell him.’

‘I thought I’d made it clear!’ she says. ‘He’s not taking the hint!’

Shera is so young, Reine thinks, so young and so absolutely without the life experience that would clear all this up. And win her and John a decent amount of Gil, what with the betting pool. But she can’t win it if she influences it.

‘I’ll talk to the Captain,’ she promises, instead. ‘And I’ll see if I can’t get all this cleared up.’

Shera huffs out a breath, because Reine keeps her promises, but she’s also seen what the Captain is like, and doesn’t think Rafa would look any better with a broken nose.

Not that she’s interested in him looking better or worse. The Captain’s nose needs to stay right where it is, but Rafa’s – no, that can do whatever it wants.

Livas is giving the Captain a real good talking-to when Shera gets to the rocket that morning, and she lingers for a moment, listens to the Captain just sit there and take it, which is not like him. She hears her name a few times more than she thinks is necessary, and raises her eyebrows when her name and a few – ahem, _adult_ – actions are mentioned in the same breath.

‘Oh, fuck _off_!’ the Captain spits. ‘I couldn’t give less of a fucking shit if she’s sucking his dick, get off my ass.’

‘Then get your head out of it and I wouldn’t have to be on it!’ Livas snaps back. ‘You’re like a fucking child!’

Which the Captain cannot reply to without making it clear he _is_ a child, and so Shera deems it safe to go up.

At lunch, when they return to the ground for the rolls Reine had made, Rafa is right there again, and he touches her hair. He’s never done that before, and she’s sure there’s nothing in it, just a strand hanging across her face that he catches and tucks behind her ear with the rest of her fringe, but it catches her off-guard and she doesn’t know what to do.

She knows even less what to do when the Captain is in her space, hand tight around her arm.

‘So I need you, right now,’ he says, growls, really, and her heart does something dangerous to her health, ‘alone.’

Livas, being the horrible man that he is, whistles.

‘Fuck off,’ the Captain spits, and Shera nearly drops her lunch with the force he yanks her arm with.

He drags her in the direction of his cabin, which isn’t helping his case at all, but she obligingly trots along, and tries to ignore the flip-flopping going in in her belly, the heat pooling low in her gut.

‘Captain,’ she says, gasps, really.

‘Shut your mouth,’ he replies, and she probably shouldn’t like the hitch in his voice so much.

He kicks the door open, and it’s a wonder it shuts, the way he behaves, and yanks her forward so she goes in first. She almost laughs at the brashness of it, but there’s fire in his eyes, and she backs herself into the table as he boots the door shut and stalks into her space. She’s not afraid, knows the pounding of a fearful heart. No, no, she’s not afraid.

‘Captain,’ she repeats, voice barely above a whisper.

‘Shera,’ he replies, and he’s so close she can count the different shades of blue around his pupil, wide and dark and meeting her unflinchingly. ‘The _fuck_ are you playing at?’

She digs her fingers into the table.

‘I’m playing at nothing,’ she says, which sounds like a lie.

‘No,’ he snorts, nose-to-nose, and _fuck_ she wants to kiss him.

She’s never wanted to _kiss_ him before. She’s daydreamed about it, once in a blue moon, when she’s caught up with him lighting matches, and she’s had the odd dream that’s left her uncomfortable and too-hot, and when they got the rocket to hit the atmosphere, she’d wanted to kiss him, but that was a peck-on-the-cheek sort of want. This is a grab his hair and taste his tongue sort of want.

‘No,’ she breathes back. ‘I’m not.’

‘He – he wants – he’s after – Shera, I.’

She draws a breath, and his chin tilts, just a little, and she thinks he’s going to kiss her. Hell, with the heat between her legs right now, she’d probably let him do whatever he wanted.

Instead, his breath shudders, and he straightens, taking half a step back. The spell, whatever of it there was – science, Shera thinks, she’s based in science, and it was magic, _materia_ that got her sister killed, so she’s staying as far away as possible, thank you – is broken, and she swallows.

‘Just stop answering him every time he barks,’ he says, cool enough, and she doesn’t know how he does it. ‘He’ll leave you alone.’

Rafa is only with them for a week, and it’s easier after that. She doesn’t have to not answer him, because he stops talking to her so much, goes and speaks to the other members of the team, who are happy enough to distract him so that the Captain and Shera can get on with their jobs and it’s like they haven’t just spent a week not talking to each other. Another week goes by, and then Shera gets another email she ignores, and Rafa is gone, and that’s the end of that.

The next intern they get is just before the launch of Rocket No. 26, and after that, ShinRa doesn’t send anybody.

* * *

He takes her into town in the winter, because she’s full of cold but needs to get groceries, and Reine’s got enough to be getting on with. It had surprised them all, when he volunteered to take time out of the rocket to go with her, but Livas had been the one to initially offer, and nobody had done much but smile when he practically threw himself out of the Inn to get the car going.

‘You’re a shit driver,’ he says, by way of excuse, when Livas eyes him. ‘I don’t trust you not to get her killed.’

It’s a paltry excuse; Livas has driven her to town several times, because whilst Shera _can_ drive, she avoids it where she can, and Livas has always been happy to help out. It’s certainly the first time the Captain has jumped at the opportunity to take her.

They go and he walks alongside her as she squints at her list and asks him to get the top-shelf products down for her. She’s perfectly capable of doing it herself, because she’s only a few inches shorter than him, but she’s sniffling pitifully and she knows full well what she’s doing, and _he_ knows what she’s doing. But he finds that he – doesn’t mind.

‘Are you sure you’re alright to be out?’ he asks, ‘I don’t want you fucking up the rocket if you’re going to be too dosed up to think.’

‘I’m fine,’ she assures him, thick in the throat, ‘can you get me four bags of the Banora whites, please? You’re closer. It’s just a cold, is all.’

He gives her a stern look, but goes and gets four bags of apples for her, as requested.

‘I mean it, though,’ he says, dumping them in the cart, to which she rolls her eyes, because they’ll bruise like that, ‘if you’re sick, you should be in bed.’

‘So you can look after me?’ she whips back, and tries not to blush.

‘If that’s what it took,’ he shrugs, which is pretty smooth, she’ll give him that.

* * *

She goes home, a few times. Birthdays, and holidays, when she can get away for a few days, and the Captain can be nice enough about it. And it’s nice, going home, her mother’s cooking, and her father’s latest theories about Mako, but it’s – it’s not the same.

She misses them terribly when she’s not with them, and then when she’s with them, she just wants to be back with the crew.

‘Shera,’ her mother says one night, at the winter holiday, where the Captain had been so kind as to tell them all to fuck off because they’ve been working hard, and the rockets are consistently in space now, and they’ve almost sticked the landing, but ShinRa haven’t given them the go-ahead for animal testing, which is putting his nose _right_ out of joint. ‘Are you – alright?’

Shera had been daydreaming about the Captain again, the way that he was always sort of halfway on her thoughts. She laughs, and hides her blush, and stares out of the window.

‘Yes, I’m fine. Just – missing my work.’

‘Just your work?’

Shera throws a cushion at her mother, and tells her she’s horrible. Laughing, her mother leaves her daughter to it, and later, Shera thinks of the odd sadness in her mother’s face at dinner that night. She supposes she’s lost one daughter to work, and a man, and to lose another would be – well. Shera has never had her heart broken, but she can imagine it hurts.

* * *

He buys her a copy of LOVELESS for her twenty-third birthday, just weeks before No. 26 is aborted. When she unwraps it, he shrugs.

‘I thought you might like it,’ he says, and rubs the back of his neck. ‘When I went for my interview, it was playing. Fuckin’ weird story, but seems like your sort of thing. All that “ _I’ll return knowing you’re here”_ bullshit. Seems like your kind of thing.’

It is, after a fashion. She grew up with LOVELESS, with the school production – watered down, of course – and the music from the play all over the radio. There’s been rumours of making a musical for years, but nobody’s been brave enough to take it on. Someone made it into a ballet once, but it didn’t last long. It’s one of those books that’s always been on her list, but has never quite made it to the top, and she holds the book in her hands, smiles.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and pulls the book into her chest.

‘You’re welcome,’ he says, and for the first time in a long while, he looks – flustered.

* * *

Some years later, when he’s far from her, and ShinRa are on her doorstep calling him a traitor, a murderer, a terrorist, she reads that book again, and she thinks about what he’d said, the lines from the play he’d quoted. The next time she speaks to him, it’s sombre, quiet. He’s harrowed, broken, hurt by the world at large, and she almost quotes it back to him.

She says something else instead, but she knows it, for the truth that it is, that he’s coming back to her.


	6. The Beginning of the Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not so much a rest as it is a fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe slight alteration to the exact happening of events, but it's more fun this way.
> 
> whoops slow burn
> 
> enjoy my lovelies~!

Vincent and Red are the first to arrive, and Shera doesn’t quite know what to do with them. They’re bedraggled and damp, and the most she can offer is a shower and a change of clothes while Vincent’s dry out, but the trousers are several inches short on the leg and the t-shirt hangs oddly loose. She feeds them up and gives them a steady stream of tea, and Vincent says not a whole lot for the first few hours.

Red is only marginally more talkative, asking Shera about the reaction to meteor, informing her that there are WEAPONs wandering about and nobody was entirely sure what they’d do. But he doesn’t tell her where Cid is, and neither does Yuffie, when she comes barreling through the door several hours later, even more bedraggled and clearly having thrown up on herself. She’d tried to rinse her shirt out, but Shera hasn’t been around the boys for this long to not recognise when inertia hits you so hard you can’t even think, never mind keep your stomach contents in.

‘Where’s the old man?’ she demands, and it’s only when Shera goes to shut the door behind her that she realises Yuffie’s got a parachute harness on.

‘What happened?’ she asks, and Yuffie struggles out of the harness with Shera’s help.

‘The old man had a _brilliant_ idea, but it’s all gone completely to hell!’ she exclaims, and Vincent, back in his cloak at least, which is a combination and a half, nods.

‘Hell is much worse,’ he says, ‘but it didn’t go to plan. We were captured, by Rufus, and taken aboard the _Highwind._ His intention was to use us as pawns, as scapegoats, for having engineered the crisis above our heads.’

‘What do you mean scapegoats?’ Shera asks, and herds Yuffie to the bathroom with the promise of a hot shower and clean clothes.

Vincent rakes a hand through his hair.

‘His initial intention was to have us imprisoned at Junon. He had not yet decided what our fates would be afterwards.’

‘But nothing good,’ Red interjects, ‘I’m sure.’

‘So you jumped?’ Shera asks, ‘Planet, but you could have all died!’

Vincent looks at his feet. Red looks at the wall. Yuffie is whistling to herself in the shower. Shera excuses herself to go and fetch clean clothes for Yuffie, and takes a moment, while in her bedroom, to hide her face in her hands. She can’t imagine that the Captain will be dead, he’s far too stubborn, and too good at jumping, besides. As long as he has a parachute, he’ll be alright, and he’ll make it back to her.

‘Oh, Planet,’ she breathes into her palms, and then gathers her composure, picks out a set of clothes, and back downstairs she goes.

Vincent is fiddling with the kettle, and she almost smiles.

‘Pull the lid,’ she says, ‘it seals itself when it’s hot.’

He does as instructed, and the lid pops free just as the shower turns off. Shera knocks, politely, and shoves the clothes into the gap Yuffie provides. They’ll be too big for her, Shera a few inches taller, but they’ll do until she can get the ninja’s kit properly washed.

‘We jumped at slightly different times,’ Vincent offers, a little while later, as Shera cobbles together something for them to eat. ‘Yuffie’s travel-sickness was something of a delay for her and Cid. I do not know what happened to Barret and Tifa.’

‘I hope they got off the ship,’ Yuffie says, mouth twisting. ‘I mean, it’ll be pretty crap if we can’t get our kit back, but I’d rather have them.’

‘You left your kit aboard?’ Shera asks, and for a moment, she is so horrendously taken aback that she doesn’t know what to say.

‘All part of the Captain’s plan,’ Red assures her, ‘he intends to reclaim the ship from without. If I am brutally honest, I don’t think he really considered the plan in its entirety.’

Shera rubs her eyes, and turns back to the pan to stir it.

‘It’s been a long time since anyone could call him hare-brained,’ she says, and Yuffie snorts.

‘Where is he, anyway?’

‘He hasn’t arrived yet.’

She falls silent at this, and considers what it means.

‘He said to meet here,’ she says, quiet, ‘that if we couldn’t make contact through our phones, to meet here within two days.’

‘It’s been a little over a day,’ Vincent tells her, ‘there is no need to worry yet.’

Yuffie draws a breath, and then lets it out hard. ‘I suppose,’ she nods. ‘He jumped straight after me, I saw him before I pulled the cord.’

‘It’s a fine art,’ Shera tells her, ‘using a parachute; pull it too early and you’ll end up way off course. Pull it too late, and you won’t slow down enough.’

‘I pulled it as soon as I could,’ Yuffie tells her, and Shera nods.

‘He’ll have left his to the last second, he always does. Where did you land?’

‘Far side of the mountains,’ Yuffie says, and Vincent tells her he and Red landed not far out of Costa del Sol.

‘You’ve travelled a long way in a short time,’ Shera nods, ‘especially on foot. Eat, and then rest. I’ll try and reach the Captain.’

‘If he hasn’t called, his PHS is likely broken,’ Red says, and Shera hums.

‘Probably, but when we all moved out here, we didn’t have much more than radios. Certainly no PHS signal! We have a frequency we use, to call each other if we need. If he’s near a radio, he’ll tune into it.’

Red sleeps by the oven in the end, under the residual heat. Yuffie takes the pull out in the spare room, and Vincent sleeps in a chair in the corner, even though she offers him one of the camp beds they have up in the attic.

Yuffie’s snoring loudly by the time she’s convinced Vincent is at least dozing, and she wriggles into a coat, but not shoes, and slips out the door, padding down to the inn. Reine is still up, frowning at some books, when she pushes the door open.

‘Shera?’ she asks, and then looks at her feet, ‘what’s happened?’

Shera flushes, and wipes her toes on the mat. ‘I’m not entirely sure, but I need to use your radio. I think the Captain might be in trouble.’

Reine snorts, as much as she can take it light-heartedly. ‘When isn’t he in trouble? Go on, it’s in the back. Do you want tea?’

Shera pulls her coat off and tosses it on a chair, heading for the door before tossing a thank you over her shoulder.

‘I won’t be too long, if he’s around to pick up, he will.’

It had been something they set up in the very early days, not long after Shera arrived. Cid had been adamant that they, the crew, had a way of contacting each other should ShinRa’s modern contacting methods go down, and so they had commandeered a frequency, and developed a series of – she supposes it’s not unlike a code – a series of noises, taps or bangs or such, to use to signal each other if they couldn’t speak.

She hasn’t used the frequency in all of the time she’s been in Rocket Town, which hadn’t even been a town when she arrived, but she twists the dial to the correct numbers anyway, and listens.

‘Captain?’ she asks into the receiver, ‘are you there?’

She knows that if he’s alive, he won’t be asleep. For all he naps, he’s got a job to do, and he’ll not sleep until he’s done it, and so if he’s found a radio, he’ll be on the frequency. And even if he has fallen asleep, the static of the connection will tell him that someone’s tuned in.

‘Captain?’

She waits through two cups of tea, but there’s nothing. Not even a rustle of static.

‘Reine,’ she says, ‘I’m – I’m worried.’

‘Don’t be,’ Reine replies. ‘You know what the Captain’s like. He’s as stubborn as anything, he’ll find his way back here, if here’s where he’s intending to come.’

‘It is,’ Shera nods. ‘They were – oh Reine, he parachuted out of the _Highwind_.’

Reine snorts. ‘He’ll be fine, you know he will. The man’s got the strongest knees on the planet.’

‘It’s not his knees I’m worried about,’ Shera murmurs, but nods anyway.

‘Will you listen?’ she asks, when Reine has taken her cup from her, ‘in case he calls?’

‘Of course. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything if I do.’

Shera nods, and Reine cups her cheek.

‘You look exhausted, go to bed.’

‘How am I supposed to sleep?’ she asks, ‘he’s out there, and the state of the others when they arrived! He’ll only have his spear, and what if it broke? What if he’s hurt? I know him, he won’t have a Restore on him, and I couldn’t make him drink a potion until he was half-dead!’

Reine laughs. ‘You fret too much. He’ll be here in the morning.’

Shera is not convinced, but agrees all the same, and off she goes back to the house. Red looks up at her when she creeps through the door, and puts his head down again when it’s only her.

‘Any word?’ Vincent asks, and Shera jumps, then shakes her head.

‘Nothing. I hope he’s alright.’

‘I haven’t known him as long as you have,’ Vincent says, quietly, as though afraid to say it, ‘but I know him well enough, I think, to know that he will find a way back to you, even if it seems impossible.’

Shera feels herself flush, and then rubs a hand over her face.

‘I’m going to try and sleep,’ she says, ‘you should, too.’

Vincent nods, almost imperceptibly, and Shera heads upstairs.

Her sleep is fitful at best, non-existent at worst, and she sees more hours on the clock than she can count. In the end, she gets up at the first hint of sun on the horizon, and washes, dresses, checks on the party’s laundry. Yuffie’s shirt is dry, but Vincent’s sleeves still damp around the edges. She’s sure he’d much rather wear it than Cid’s clothes. Vincent and Red are awake, on the porch and staring out over the sun peeking pink and gold across the mountains.

‘Morning,’ she says, and they glance at her. ‘Do you want breakfast?’

‘Yuffie will eat you out of house and home,’ Vincent warns, ‘she is ravenous most days.’

Shera laughs, and assures him that it’s fine.

‘I’ve cooked for hungry boys,’ she tells him, ‘one girl is not a problem. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’

The day starts off clean and crisp, and turns greyer as the morning progresses. By the time Yuffie manages to drag herself out of bed, bedraggled and bleary-eyed, the first spots of rain have begun to hit the windows, and by lunchtime, it’s practically a torrential downpour. They sit there, not really knowing what to do with themselves except wait, and Shera grows more and more concerned as the day goes on. She’d gone back to the Inn, but Reine had heard nothing, and let Shera know that the rest of the town were tuned into their radios too, just in case.

‘What do we do?’ Yuffie asks Vincent quietly, ‘if Cid doesn’t arrive? What about Barret and Tifa?’

Vincent looks at Shera, standing on the porch, wringing her hands. ‘We go to Junon. Do our best to – to disrupt ShinRa’s plans.’

‘Do you think we can? They want to stop the WEAPONs. Are we strong enough to do that?’

Vincent, uncharacteristically, snorts. ‘Spoken like a true Princess. You climbed the Pagoda, did you not? Defeated your father in combat. You are more than strong enough.’

She flushes, and ducks her chin, and scurries outside to hide in Shera’s fretting aura. Shera finds this sweet, and doesn’t pry as to the girl’s red cheeks, knows her own when the Captain lights a match are no better.

They stay out there for another few hours, and then retire inside. There is still no sign of the Captain, and Shera is sick with a combination of worry and hunger.

‘I’d best get you fed,’ she says, ‘if you intend to make for Junon in the morning.’

She’s just about to plate the food when the door is unceremoniously kicked open. On reflex, Vincent is out of his chair, gun in hand, and Yuffie springs to her feet, grasping the fork she’d been spinning around her fingers. Red’s back arches, but it’s only Cid.

‘Fucking behave,’ he snaps, and slams the door behind him.

He’s dripping mud, not just muddy, _dripping_ it. He’s battered and bruised and looks twice as bedraggled as the others had. Shera opens her mouth to express her dismay about the state of the floor – it had taken her a long time to get it clean after the mud the others had traipsed through – but the look on his face tells her not to.

‘Fucking PHS broke, didn’t it?’ he says, and kicks off his boots, yanking at his jacket. ‘You better not have fuckin’ worried. You know I’m made of harder shit.’

‘We weren’t worried!’ Yuffie says, entirely too loud. ‘Of course not! Who cares about you, old man! It’s your fault we’re here in the first place!’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, shut you mouth. Shera’s made you food, sit down and eat it, you ungrateful brat.’

He stomps through to the bathroom, and Shera hurriedly puts food on the plates, sliding them in front of the party before hurrying after him.

‘Captain,’ she says, and he looks at her.

They’re so close in the bathroom, not really designed to have two full grown adults in at any one time, and his eyes are electric in the poor lighting.

‘Shera,’ he replies, ‘you worried.’

‘Of course I did!’ she exclaims, at barely more than a whisper, and toes the door to, wriggling past him to get the taps of the bath running. ‘Vincent and Red showed up, and then Yuffie, and they were in such a state, and they told me what had happened, and – Captain, I thought for sure! I checked the radio, just in case.’

‘I tried,’ he admits, and she’s glad she has her back to him, hears the slop of his t-shirt hitting the sink. At least it isn’t the floor. ‘But there wasn’t one for miles. Figured it’d be quicker to just come straight here, than try to divert to a town with one.’

She nods, wrist under the water to check the temperature.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she says, and he huffs out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh.

When she turns back, the temperature of the room feels a good ten degrees warmer. She’d forgotten what he looks like without a shirt, the small amount of hair, the soft shadow of muscle, the narrow breadth of his shoulders. Thirty-two or not, he’s still prone to wandering around with no shirt in the summer if he’s working outdoors, but given that their workload consists more of instruction and less action, it’s a rarer event to see, and certainly rarer still to be this close. He stinks, besides, mud and sweat and blood, but in the heat of the room, she feels the desperate urge to lick her lips.

‘I’m glad I’m here, too,’ he says, and she’s sure she’s imagining the catch in his voice, the gravel.

She nods, and swallows thickly.

‘I’ll make you something up,’ she says, ‘for when you’re done in the bath.’

‘Fucking bath,’ he snorts, rolling his eyes, and takes half a step back, fingers already on his belt. ‘Saves water to have a shower, four-eyes. But thanks.’

She smiles, and scurries out of the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Yuffie is giving her some incredibly raised eyebrows, which she staunchly ignores, and looks in all of the cabinets twice, utterly ineffectual at actually achieving anything close to preparing a secondary dinner for the Captain.

In the bathroom, Cid fights with the last of his clothes, sitting heavily on the toilet lid to fight with his socks; too wet to be comfortable removing, and searing pain in one ankle from a poorly landed jump in the mountains. His stomach is too tight, turning over itself with frustration and hunger both, and he watches the water in the tub for a minute or two, rubbing his thumbs hard into the sole of his sore foot. It’s a good distraction from how close Shera had been, how warm she’d felt in his space, how sweet the smell of her soap was, citrussy and fresh and _planet_ , he’s getting soft.

Huffing out a breath, he stretches his neck and sighs hard.

It had been a long couple days slog, and he’d not been equipped properly for it, his materia selection awful for a solo trip, and his spear blunt as fuck. Never mind that he was already tired before he’d even jumped, but the exhaustion was burning behind his eyes. He wants to sleep, and he’s glad the tub is small, because if he could, he’s sure he’d drown in it. He pushes himself upright and gets out of his trousers and boxers, tossing them in the sink alongside his shirt, and fucking hell he aches. He’s not that badly injured, considering, a few scrapes and bruises, his ankle the worst of it. He’ll nag Yuffie for a Cure when he’s done, let it take the edge off, but for now he wants to be clean.

‘We’ll have to get moving in the morning!’ he hollers, and hears hums of agreements on the other side of the door. ‘Barret and Tifa didn’t make it off the ship! Fucking traitor caught ‘em before I could get Barret to jump!’

Yuffie swears, and he hears Shera chastise her, the way she used to chastise him when he really cursed up a storm. It makes him laugh, just a sigh of it, and he settles deeper in the water. He’s in there for a few more minutes before a soft knock at the door, and Shera opens it enough to poke through clean clothes.

‘I’ll get the dirty stuff after,’ she says, ‘and run it through so it’s clean for the morning.’

Cid grunts, and she shuts the door again.

‘Are they alright?’ Yuffie calls through, and Cid had almost begun to drift.

‘Far as I know, kid!’

He scrubs down pretty quickly after that, and is still damp around the edges when he yanks on the clean trousers Shera had poked through. He pulls the bathroom door open and steps out, trying his best not to baby his ankle, because he’s a grown-ass man and he can handle a sore joint.

‘We need to make contact with the _Highwind_ ,’ he says, ‘find out if they were successful with the mutiny. They should have been, they’re a good bunch of kids. Fucking children, mind, most of them are trainees, but they’re good kids.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Shera says, and he tries not to notice the pinkness in her cheeks, decides, if it ever comes up, that he will say it was because of the heat from the stove.

‘I corralled them,’ Cid says, wiping a stray droplet of water off his collarbone, ‘Heidegger is a shit boss, and I know I’m a fucking jackass, but I know how to treat a fucking crew, especially a crew made up of _children_.’

‘I’ll get Reine to radio them,’ Shera says, ‘there should be someone on board who knows what to do.’

Cid nods, ‘there’s definitely a couple old hands, from back when she was with me.’

Yuffie is looking between them with her mouth half-open. Vincent is still eating his dinner. Red looks like he’s dozing by the warming tray of the oven, which puts him right under Shera’s feet, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She wouldn’t mind being run over, the silly girl.

‘I don’t understand,’ Yuffie says, and Cid rolls his eyes.

Shera puts a cup of tea in front of him, and he holds it in both hands.

‘I used to have the _Highwind_ under my command, back before ShinRa fuckin’ stole it. It was a good ship with a good crew. Then Rufus decided he wanted it, and I wasn’t going to be left to be Captain.’

‘Because you’re a terrorist.’

‘Believe it or not,’ Cid snorts, and downs the tea in one, which makes Yuffie’s eyes water in sympathy. Pretending like his life choices are not burning holes in his gums, he says, ‘my life didn’t begin when you met me.’

‘They say life begins at forty,’ she replies, and he looks like he wants to kick her where it hurts.

‘I’m thirty-two, you little brat. If I’m going grey, it’s because of the fucking stress you assholes are causing me. I’m going to be dead of a heart attack before I’m forty. Fucking brat.’

Shera chuckles from the stove, and he demands to know what’s so funny.

‘Nothing,’ she says, ‘I’m nearly done with this pasta, can you get me the cheese out of the fridge, please?’

Still doing his best not to hobble, he does as asked, even though the fridge is right there next to her. Tossing it across, which she catches without looking, he returns to the seat at the table, and collapses heavily into it.

‘You’re going to break the chair,’ Yuffie tells him.

‘So not only are you calling me an old man, you’re calling me fat now, too? In my own house! The disrespect! Wutai not teaching manners anymore?’

‘Wutai teaches us to give respect to those that deserve it,’ Yuffie replies, nose in the air.

Cid, perhaps in the wisest move of his life so far, does not reply to it, instead accepts the pasta that Shera puts in front of him, and tries to be polite enough not to wolf it down, though he does continue hashing out the plan of action with the others with his mouth half-full.

Disgusting, he’s sure, but he’s got to get his brain in order, and his thoughts, before he falls asleep with a half-baked plan in action.

While they’re finishing their food and conversation, Shera disappears outside again, going back to the Inn, so she says, to tell Reine to make contact with the ship.

‘She’s nice,’ Yuffie says, looking at him from the corner of her eye in a way that very, very suspiciously reminds him of Aerith, and the grief hits him like a fucking wall.

Taking a very slow breath, he carefully shovels the thought of the flower girl into a corner of his brain where there’s a very sturdy lock, and he shuts the door on it. Thoughts of Aerith can come later, when he has time to think about them, but right now he’s got another two members of AVALANCHE to not get killed, and he needs to do something about them fast.

Fuck knows where Cloud is.

‘So what’s next?’ Vincent asks, ‘we get Barret and Tifa, we have the ship, what next?’

‘We stop the WEAPONs. See if we can’t find the kid, and whether we do or not, we go after Sephiroth.’

‘Just like that,’ Vincent says.

‘Just like that. Unless you got a better plan?’

Vincent shakes his head; Cid suspects he hasn’t given any of this any thought at all, because he doesn’t really care. Truth be told, neither does Cid, but someone has to do the thinking in Cloud’s stead. Well, in Tifa’s stead, because she remains the only sensible person he’s met in this ragtag group of terrorists.

‘You might as well rest,’ he says, ‘be morning before we move out, I ain’t doing more night travel.’

Yuffie returns to the spare room, and Vincent and Red take up their usual places. Cid washes the dishes while Shera’s still out, and then fishes a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer and goes outside to stand on the porch and smoke.

Shera reappears out of the gloom some minutes later, looking pleased with herself.

‘What have you done?’ he asks, but there’s nothing more than teasing understanding in his tone.

‘We got hold of the crew,’ she says, ‘they’ll be by in the morning. They’ve been looking for you, weren’t sure where you all landed. They said that Barret and Tifa are in Junon now. They wanted to wait on your instructions before doing anything.’

‘Finally, someone sensible,’ he snorts, and shuffles along the porch so she can stand beside him.

‘Will Barret and Tifa be alright?’ she asks, ‘Rufus won’t – do anything.’

‘No, he’s too much of a coward. They all say he rules by fear, but he’s a child, same as the rest. All mouth. His old man wasn’t much better.’

‘I’ve heard horrible things,’ she says.

‘You heard horrible things about me, before you arrived,’ he reminds her, and stubs the cigarettes out. ‘It doesn’t mean a lot, in the grand scheme of things, eh?’

She supposes not, and they fall into a listless silence, looking out over the muddy grass and square in front of them.

‘Are you going to go after Sephiorth?’ Shera asks, ‘the others mentioned it, before you arrived. They told me everything that’s happened.’

‘We’ll do what we can,’ Cid nods, ‘but – Shera, I got doubts. You seen ‘em, they’re kids, near enough. We’re down two already, even if we get Barret and Tifa back.’

She looks at him.

‘I don’t want to go back to war,’ he admits, so quietly that she almost doesn’t hear him.

She says nothing for a long moment, lays her hand atop his, squeezes gently.

‘You’ll do what’s right,’ she whispers back. ‘You always do.’

His sigh is soft, barely above the whisper of her voice, and he turns his head, just a little, to look at her. She’s gentle in the low light of the clouded moon, her eyes soft behind the shine of her glasses, hair curling close to her mouth, having spent most of the day tucked behind her ear. Her skin’s getting paler, because she’s spending more time inside, and he misses the warmth of it, sun-kissed and open to the air. She looks tired, like she’s barely slept; it’s his fault, and he knows it, and his belly turns over itself with something he’s not mature enough to call guilt. She’s worried about him, and she’s been worried about him this entire time.

Fuck sake.

‘Shera,’ he whispers, and she nods.

‘I know,’ she replies, just as soft, and he hopes she does, because he doesn’t.

It’s been like that a lot lately, ever since he chased the _Bronco_ down. He’s not known what it is that he’s wanted to tell her, and has just trusted that she knows it. He’s never felt so unsure of himself, and so unsure of what he should do.

Well no, that’s a lie. He knows. Deep down, he knows.

She’s turned into him, and she’s not a ray of sunshine, even with the mustard yellow of her sweater, but the heat radiates off of her, in her skin, her eyes, her breath. And just like before, when they stood at the fence and watched each other, he feels himself sinking into her, a black hole in the very centre of his universe. And he supposes she is that, the very centre of his universe, and she has been for so, so long.

‘Captain,’ she whispers, and her eyes are bright, catching in the light, ‘stay safe, please.’

He nods, and he’s not sure who moves, but their foreheads touch, come to rest gentle and warm against each other, a weight so familiar for something neither have felt before.

‘I’ll try,’ he replies, and closes his eyes.

He’s so tired, and her fingers are warm on his arm, brushing so soft against his skin. An electric shock that barely stirs him, except for his arm hair raising in the wake of her fingertips. Her head shifts, his in reply, and their noses touch, so faint that he’s not entirely certain it did.

They stand together for several long moments.

‘You should get some rest,’ she whispers, and he nods, slowly.

‘Yeah,’ he agrees. ‘Early start in the morning.’

‘Exactly.’

But they don’t move for another few moments.

Her hand touches his arm more firmly, curling about the forearm, and squeezing.

‘Come on, Captain. Bed.’

He nods, and she slowly steps out from under him, moving out of his space to give him room to manoeuvre.

She follows him inside, and he does his best to ignore the way that Vincent looks at him as he passes. He’s got no right to comment, considering what he failed to do.

* * *

In the morning, he’s woken by the familiar sound of propellers. The ship’s here, and he’s never been so relieved to hear it. Shera has put his jacket, clean and dry, on the chair just inside the door, and it’s a testament, he supposes, to how tired he was that he didn’t hear her come in.

Dressing quickly, scarf only half-way around his neck, he bolts downstairs and nearly knocks a bleary-eyed, pyjama-clad Yuffie over.

‘What’s the racket?’ she asks, rubbing at her eyes.

‘The ship,’ Cid crows, ‘come on, kid, get dressed, we haven’t got all day.’

Vincent is with Shera in the kitchen, clearly under her stern instruction on how to cook bacon, while she makes up a round of sandwiches.

‘It won’t be a lot,’ she says, ‘and I haven’t got enough to feed the crew, but I can make you all something for lunch.’

He snorts, and steals a strip of bacon from the cooked pile, heading to the door to shove his feet in his boots.

Cait Sith is disembarking the ship as he crosses the square, and they meet in the middle.

‘Cid,’ the robot says, and Cid is trying so hard to place his voice, so very, very hard. ‘I have some good and bad news.’

‘What is it?’

‘Barret and Tifa are safe for now, that’s the good news. Rufus isn’t going to lay a hand on them, he’s expecting Cloud to come and save them. Heidegger is very cross about the _Highwind_ , but he can’t do anything about it.’

‘What’s the bad news?’

‘The WEAPONs are attacking towns, but ShinRa are convinced they can out-attack them, using Sister Ray. Regarding Barret and Tifa, Scarlet is pushing for a public execution, as part of the propaganda saying that ShinRa are doing the best that they can.’

Cid swears, loudly and violently, and stomps past the robot to clamber up the ladder into the ship. The trainee pilot on the deck looks at him with no small measure of shock.

‘Captain!’ he exclaims, ‘we’re doing the best we can, but it’s – we haven’t been on a ship since the last lecture!’

‘Yeah,’ Cid nods, and goes to look at the controls, ‘I can tell. When you land, you need to square her up, get her flush with any buildings around you. You’re more likely to cause damage if you aren’t in line. But you did your best, I can see that. Good job, kiddo.’

The trainee puffs up with pride; getting compliments from Cid is hard going, and usually he calls them a moron. That will come later, when the trainee is so caught up in being in the presence of AVALANCHE, that he will just completely forgot how to steer the ship.

After checking in with the rest of the crew, and taking some small delight in finding his arch fucking enemy – well, one of them, the less said about Isak, the better – tied up in the chocobo stable, he throws Matteo out of the ship and leaves him to the Rocket Town rabble, absolutely ignoring any and all insults the snivelling little shit can level at him. His nose still doesn’t look right, and Cid regrets _nothing_. He also, having checked in with the crew and waved his dick about, as is his wont when he’s on his ship, he returns to the house, where Shera has finished off breakfast and packed their lunches.

‘You’re ready to go,’ she says, and he nods.

Yuffie is dressed now, and has her mouth stuffed full of pancake, and he wonders, not for the first time, what it might be like to have her here more often. She’d likely be able to eat him out of house and home, the girl can pack food away, but she’s so clumsy he wonders how she hasn’t broken a limb tripping over her own feet yet.

‘Let’s go!’ she says, and slaps him on the arm, barging past to rush to the ship. A few moments pass and then there’s a bang and a yelled, ‘I’m okay!’

Vincent and Red give their thanks to Shera, and then disappear, leaving them alone again.

‘You’ll be alright?’

He hates that it comes out as a question.

‘I think so,’ she says, ‘I worry about – about Meteor.’

‘We’ll do what we can to stop it,’ he says, ‘but there’s only so much we can do. You need to stay safe. The WEAPONs are attacking, and there’s no reason to say they won’t come here. I don’t have details, but you’ll stay safe, won’t you?’

She nods. ‘Of course. We’re a strong bunch, we’ll do what we have to.’

He nods, and looks at her face, commits to a memory he already had. He’d know her face if he was blind, he’d know every inch – almost every inch, ha – of her, no matter where he was, what he was doing. Fuck sake, if Sephiroth cared enough to try and get under his skin, well, he’d just need an illusion of Shera, and that would be him fucked from the beginning.

‘Hey,’ he says, quiet. ‘Listen, this is going to be a – it’s going to be a long haul. I don’t know what’s coming our way, just that it is. I’m going to be gone for a while, I think. We’re going to stop Sephiroth, and we’re going to try and find a way to stop Meteor. But when it’s over, when I – when I come back, maybe.’

‘Maybe?’ she asks, and he’s not sure when he drifted so close to her to feel the honey of her breath against his face.

‘Maybe we can,’ he starts, but Yuffie yells his name from across the square and startles him.

‘C’mon, old man!’ she screeches, ‘we gotta get a move on, get Barret and Tifa back!’

He rubs the back of his head, and takes a step back, takes the basket of lunch Shera offers.

‘Thanks,’ he says, and she smiles, nods.

‘Fight safe,’ she says, and he promises to try.

For the first time, he glances back as he walks away, and can see her blush from here.

* * *

They don’t get their opening until the seventh day after the whole, North Cave thing. Scarlet’s set the date for the public execution, and Yuffie has an actually smart idea to pretend to be a reporter, get into the press room, maybe disturb it from inside. She’s the most reasonable choice; Cid is too easily recognised, no matter how scruffy he is, because if Palmer could find him in the _Shanghai_ , then he’ll be recognised anywhere, and Vincent is – well, Vincent wouldn’t know where to start. And Red isn’t _human_. So really, it’s only Yuffie that can do it. Cait’s on the inside, as a robot who works with ShinRa anyway, and they just have to trust that he’s not going to sell them out.

All Cid can do is hover and pace and wait until he gets the signal to land, and then hope to the fucking _Planet_ that Barret and Tifa are able to make it aboard. It’s all he can do.

And in between the pacing, and the musing about what they’re going to do next, whether the kid survived, whether Tifa is going to be able to bear the weight of losing Cloud and Aerith in near enough one hit, whether they’ll be able to find a way to stop Meteor, he thinks about what he was going to say to Shera. Whether, really, he was going to say anything at all.

Vincent watches him, in the way Vincent doesn’t really look at him but never takes his eyes off him.

‘The fuck you staring at?’

‘You’re interesting,’ Vincent says, and that’s the end of it. He gets no context, no explanation, not even a definition of what sort of interesting he is.

Cid doesn’t bother thinking about it, he just keeps pacing, and wondering whether Isak might pay Shera a visit, what with Meteor, and Cid being off trying to save the fucking world and all.

‘I’m getting too fucking old for this shit,’ he says, mostly to himself.

‘And yet,’ Vincent hums, and Cid supposes he has a point, even though he’s said _nothing_.

He has no idea what’s going on for the longest time, and then Yuffie comes barrelling into the cockpit, yelling at him to get moving, to go to the cannon, and Cid leaps, rushes to the controls, where the trainee pilot is about to have a nervous fucking breakdown, but he’s good. Cid knows he’s good, and knows what to do, and he cajoles the kid into getting them airborne, swinging them around to the cannon, and Cid watches as Tifa throws herself off the end to grab onto a rope.

‘The fuck are these kids made of?’ he asks, but doesn’t really need an answer.

With Barret and Tifa now aboard, they disappear from Junon and make for clear skies to have breathing room to discuss what to do next. Tifa only seems to care about finding Cloud, and Cid supposes he can’t blame her, but they have an entire planet to travel across, and the kid could be anywhere, if he’s still alive at all.

‘We have the WEAPONs to worry about,’ Barret says, quite reasonably, ‘and there’s Meteor, too. We gotta be smart about searching for the spiky-brained little shit.’

Yuffie, doubled over a bucket, as she seems to always be on any mode of transport, gets a glazed look in her eye, and Cid frowns at her. Her head cocks, as though listening to something, and then she says, in a very small voice, ‘isn’t Mideel where all the doctors live?’

Cid nods, and grunts in agreement. ‘Some of the best,’ he says, ‘s’where Shera’s from, her dad’s a doctor, or something. Why’d you ask?’

‘If Cloud’s sick, won’t he be there? To get better?’

Tifa looks at her, and Yuffie shrugs.

Barret makes some noises in the back of his mouth and then says, ‘it’s as good a startin’ point as any, I suppose! What d’you say, Cid? It’s your ship.’

Cid is looking at Yuffie, and Yuffie looks at him, with that same sadness she’d had in the snow, and he knows. In his gut, he knows. Aerith had told her about Mideel, about the doctors, and she’d obviously connected it to the lifestream Red had just mentioned, and he carefully shuts the door on thoughts of Aerith again.

‘Yeah, why not? Can’t hurt to look.’

Tifa nods. ‘Then we’ll go to Mideel, and if Cloud’s not there, well – we can ask them to keep an eye out for him. Many eyes, and all.’

She looks unsure, and glances at Cid, and he offers her a smile before turning to the trainee pilot next to him and clapping a hand on his shoulder, making him flinch.

‘You want to head south-east,’ he instructs, ‘large series of islands.’

‘Yes, Captain!’

Yuffie comes and stands, very small, next to him for a minute. He rests a hand on the back of her neck, and tells her to go find a quiet corner somewhere deep in the belly of the ship, where the wobble isn’t so obvious. He watches her go, and then looks out across the horizon stretching out in front of them through the glass.

It feels good, to be back in his ship, but something just doesn’t feel right, feels hollow, and empty. He figures it’s the dull red glow of Meteor above them, looming ever closer, and lights a cigarette.


	7. The Doctor and the Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang visits Mideel, because it's as good a place as any, and Cait Sith gives them a little bit of insider knowledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, language. Also Cloud, I guess.

Cid has only been to Mideel a couple of times; following the disaster of the rocket, when he knew he had to apologise for being especially awful, but unable to spit the words out, he’d take the _Bronco_ out to Mideel and pick up a loaf of bread or lemon cake for Shera, knowing that she was fond of either, both, neither. The way she’d look at him when he presented her with his purchase, her eyes so wide and so sad, full of understanding and – and – and – he doesn’t know. She always looked at him like she understood what the gesture was, and why he’d chosen the gesture he did, but not how he knew to buy those things, or why he’d do it in the first place. The combination of shock and disappointment and disbelief, and the clear look on her face that said clear as day his money meant nothing to her if his words weren’t there. It hurt. A little, deep in his belly, turning over with hunger and anger.

So he’s not familiar enough with the town layout to know where they’re going. But Tifa had latched onto him having said Shera was from Mideel, and if Shera was from Mideel then surely, as her husband, he must know the town. There are times where he very intensely regrets opening his mouth, and other times where he isn’t entirely convinced his continued existence benefits the Planet at large. He’s not sure which of those times this is, so instead of addressing it, he tells Tifa that he’s not Shera’s husband.

‘Oh,’ she says, absently, like she’s not really listening; she isn’t, she’s making her way off the ship and staring up at the log buildings and the dirt track paths with something a little fearful in her eyes.

‘I know where the baker’s is,’ Cid offers, and Barret, the other side of Tifa, snorts.

‘Bread,’ Barret says, as though that means anything at all.

Prick.

Having said that, he’s sure that Shera is not from Mideel itself, but one of the little towns outside of the city. If it can be called a city, it looks awfully small for a city, but everything else is smaller still. He wonders if it’s appropriate to buy her a cake while they’re here. He doesn’t intend to go back to Rocket Town again for a while now, he’s seen more than enough of her for a lifetime.

‘Where do you think the doctors will be?’ Tifa asks, and they shrug their shoulders and follow her, because she’s off, marching down the street like she owns it.

There is something about Tifa, this Cid knows well enough by now, some false-security lulling that she has in her eyes that makes everybody around them fall for her, open up in a way they wouldn’t otherwise open up for strangers, and it’s not the same force of nature that Aerith employed, it’s quieter, softer. Children come rushing up to her to ask for help with playing games and drawing with chalk on the stones, and plaiting their hair, and Tifa offers what she can, doing her best to steer the conversation into territory where she might get advice.

Barret and Cid look at each other, and decide to leave her to it. The others have already split off, off on their own little adventures within the town; Cait tells them that this is a town known for its hot springs, and that’s all Yuffie wants to know, so off they go to investigate. Vincent goes off to brood in a corner, or sulk over something, or whatever it is. Red wants to know more about the lifestream, so off he goes to seek information, and that’s the party done. Barret and Cid are left with Tifa, and Cid supposes that this is sensible. The three of them are more than enough to deal with any danger, and the rest of them are capable enough.

‘We’ll go elsewhere,’ they say, and Tifa, carefully teasing a girl’s locks into a halo braid, nods.

‘Sure thing.’

And so off the boys trot, leaving Tifa to her childcare.

‘She’s a good girl,’ Barret says, ‘I hate seeing her so fuckin’ sad.’

Cid nods, and fiddles with a cigarette, feels bad about smoking when there’s so many elderly around, looking infirm and frail. Shera had said that if you were sick, if you needed any kind of care, Mideel was the place to go. End of life care, especially. He wonders how many of these people, tottering about with their walking frames and their shaking hands, are going to live to see Meteor.

Too many.

‘Let’s hope we find the kid,’ he replies, and gestures at a set of stairs.

A girl at the top of them, in blue overalls and her hair in two buns behind her ears, perks up at seeing them, and is eager to fill them in on the state of affairs here in Mideel, and tell them all about the offers in the shop behind her.

‘We could do with some new gear,’ Barret says, and Cid shrugs.

‘Whatever you want,’ he says, and they duck into the shop.

The man behind the counter recognises them both, and talks Barret’s ear off about the benefits of direct action. Cid fiddles with a spear on display, weighs it on the back of his fingers. He thinks about Shera, the way he always thinks about Shera. The next time he sees her, it might be too late to take her home. He thinks she should probably see her parents before it’s all over. She’d tell him that she’d go only on the condition he goes to see his mother, and that makes the whole conversation moot. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see his mother, but he hasn’t seen her since he was seventeen, and he’s not about to start now. He supposes the least he could do is call her.

The spear overbalances, and the point digs into the gap between two boards. He yanks it free, and puts it back. Unless he wants to use it like a sports bat, he’s got no need for it. An overbalanced spear is pointless.

Ha.

‘Say,’ he says, turning back, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had any new arrivals?’

The man behind the counter shakes his head, lip jutting out in a universal sign of ignorance.

‘Not a clue, mate, to be honest,’ he says, and Barret heaves a sigh.

‘Worth asking,’ Cid says with a shrug.

They pick up a few things, and then they take their leave. Tifa is in the street, chatting away with a couple of old men, who are waving their hands and pointing up the street. They stand there for a second and watch. Yuffie comes running past, chasing a baby chocobo, and a young girl is chasing her in turn.

‘Materia!’ she hollers up at them as she tears past, and Cid thinks better than to ask.

A bang, and she topples, rolls, and is back on her feet with a yelled assurance of her well-being. Nobody says anything, and she disappears between two buildings.

‘Guys!’ Tifa calls up, and gestures. ‘Come listen!’

They shrug and plod down the stairs and across the street. Tifa explains, quickly, that the gentleman have heard that there’s been a new arrival in the clinic, that the Doctor is incredibly worried, which is unlike him.

‘Yes,’ one of the men says, nodding slowly, ‘it’s very unlike Doctor Crescent to be worried. He’s been head physician here for, oh, nearly fifty years. We haven’t seen him have any worries like this since his daughter left home.’

Cid frowns, and looks at his feet.

‘This young man washed up, about a week ago,’ says the other, ‘and Doctor Crescent was very concerned. Which I suppose you would be. He must have come from very far away, and he’s in a very bad way. Hasn’t said a word all week, poor boy.’

Tifa looks at them, and the pleading expression on her face makes Cid’s chest ache.

‘It’s got to be Cloud,’ she says, plaintive, and Cid looks at Barret, who looks as pained as he feels.

‘It’s got to be,’ he agrees with a small, barely-there nod. ‘Where can we find the clinic?’

The men point up the hill, at a large, squat building, an old sign swinging in the breeze, faded red cross on the wood.

‘Just walk in,’ one of the men says, ‘Doctor Crescent won’t mind, especially if you know the boy.’

Tifa’s off before he’s finished the sentence, and Cid and Barret throw out hurried gratitude before rushing after her.

Tifa just barges straight in, because girls, Cid has learnt, are fucking _weird_ , and when the man they love is involved in anything, all common sense just goes straight out of their heads and down the nearest drain. He can hear her calling Cloud’s name inside, and rolls his eyes, obligingly leaves his spear at the door, because it’s a smaller building than it had looked down the street, and wipes his feet on the mat before stepping inside.

The clinic is cool, aerated with fans in the ceiling and open windows, and smells the kind of clean and hygienic he hasn’t had burn his nose in years. The floors are freshly mopped, the gurney freshly dressed, all of the bottles and books and boxes neatly arranged, tidily labelled, and for a second, he misses the workshop, the way Shera had gone through it in the first couple months of her being there, the way she’d organised it all and he’d never lost a nut or bolt ever again. Anything he could want, he could find in ten seconds flat, and he has no idea how she does it when she can’t organise her thoughts when given an entire day.

There’s a man stood next to the shelves, and at Tifa’s hollering, he wheels around, eyes wide and smiling in that sort of way you smile when you aren’t sure what else to do. He’s old, late sixties at the most generous, easily into his seventies, and his eyes are big and brown behind his thick glasses, perched on his nose over a very impressive moustache. Thouhg Cid is entirely certain he doesn’t need it, he has a badge with his name on it; Doctor Crescent, as the men had said.

‘Well, now!’ Doctor Crescent laughs, and Cid had never really thought Shera had an accent, considering they’re from opposite sides of the planet, but it’s a Mideel accent she’s got, through and through. He supposes that when you spend any amount of time in Midgar, and by her omission, she’d been there since she was fifteen, you lose any real edge to an accent you might have had, but it’s still there, and he can hear it in the doctor’s voice. ‘You’d think meteor was crashing down, with all this ruckus!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tifa says, and her ankles bend in her boots, her hands wringing. ‘Sorry, I – I heard my friend was here.’

‘Friend?’ Doctor Crescent echoes, and adjusts his glasses. ‘Oh, yes, of course, the young fellow. Well, you needn’t worry, he’s just next door, through the curtain. But I must tell you, Miss, his condition isn’t good.’

But Tifa’s brains are still in the sewage system and she doesn’t listen to a word, nearly falls through the curtain in her haste to get through it. Barret, hovering at Cid’s shoulder, is fiddling with his arm, the way Cid’s learnt he does when he’s desperately trying not to admit to any kind of fear.

‘Not good,’ he echoes, and Cid steps aside to give him room to enter.

The doctor sighs, and Cid knows his face, feels the ache of it in his gut. He knows that he should say something, of course he should, but he finds his mouth dry, his throat tight.

‘Cloud?’ Tifa asks, and the doctor gestures, giving them room to pass through the curtain too. ‘Cloud, it’s me. Are you alright? What happened?’

Cloud gurgles, groans, and Cid has never seen something quite as – tragic feels like a belittling, diminishing sort of word to use. But it’s tragic, genuinely. Cloud, looking all skin and bone, gaunt and pale, swaying like the weight of his body is too much to handle, even though he’s not moving at all. Cid’s sure he’s breathing, but it’s haggard, uneven, like the effort it takes is too much, and he’s surprised there’s no ventilator. He’s got a drip, attached to his elbow and a monitor shows his heartrate, slower than Cid thinks it probably should be. He’s dribbling, the front of his shirt damp with it, and he’s looking at Tifa without seeing her at all. It’s sad, it’s really fucking sad.

‘Mako poisoning,’ Doctor Crescent says, quietly, and both Barret and Cid draw a breath through their teeth. ‘Quite an advanced case. I’d say he’s been exposed to it for quite a period of time.’

‘Some men outside,’ Barret says, quiet, ‘they said he washed up a week ago.’

The doctor nods. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘We were in the crater,’ Barret tells him, ‘and we – we lost him in there. Some shi – some things happened.’

Doctor Crescent smiles. ‘I know who you are, you don’t have to hide it from me. You’re all over the news, Mr. Wallace. So he found his way here from the crater, then. Poor boy. I doubt he has any idea where he is now – who he is, even. He’s there, but he’s miles away from us, in a place no one else has ever been. All alone.’

Doctor Crescent shakes his head, and Tifa cries out. Cid feels his eyes widen for half a breath, a silent exclamation that no one else sees because he aims it at the floor, though he’s sure they all hear the swear word that comes out of his mouth, utterly without his say-so.

‘That’s bad,’ Barret says, which is something of an understatement.

‘Evil,’ Cid corrects, because it is.

It’s crueller than anything ShinRa could have ever done to him, and Cid’s heard about how they make SOLDIERs.

‘Cloud,’ Tifa breathes, so quiet, her hands holding his, her lip wobbling.

Doctor Crescent gestures at the door.

‘Perhaps we could continue this outside, Captain, Mr. Wallace.’

Barret and Cid look at each other, nod, and slip back out of the door. Cid reaches for his cigarettes, and looks out across the town. Yuffie is giving Vincent grief over something, her arms waving and her voice isn’t carrying for once, but she’s animated, clearly upset. Vincent is a stone wall, his arms folded, expression indifferent even from this distance.

‘So what do you think?’ Barret asks, ‘about Cloud, I mean.’

Doctor Crescent, heaving a heavy sigh, folds his arms and looks at them seriously. Cid tries not to notice that he’s being looked at far more than Barret is, and decides it’s because he’s smoking. That’s all. He’s smoking in front of a doctor, which is probably stupid.

He’s done a lot of stupid things over the years, so this doesn’t even really register as a genuinely stupid thing to do.

‘He’s lucky to be alive,’ the doctor says, and waves a hand. ‘It’s a miracle, really. No normal person would have survived it. I’m – his eyes. They’re SOLDIER eyes, am I right?’

Barret nods. ‘Yeah, he’s a SOLDIER.’

Doctor Crescent nods. ‘No matter how hard we try, ShinRa just cannot leave us be. Well, as I said, it’s one of the most advanced cases of Mako poisoning I’ve ever seen. To have had so much Mako-drenched knowledge put into his brain at once – we cannot blame him for retreating.’

Cid taps his cigarette off, draws a deep breath.

‘What can we do?’ he asks.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ Doctor Crescent replies, and sounds so sad for a moment that Cid feels his throat itch. ‘Wherever he is, he has to find his way back. But all is not lost. Remember, the light of hope can be found anywhere. If you give up hope, what will happen to him?’

Cid can’t help but snort. Doctor Crescent gives him a look, and Cid looks at the sky before turning his head away, can’t find it in himself to justify the noises that come out of his mouth.

‘Do we want him to come back?’ Barret asks, and Cid looks at him.

‘Fuck you on about?’

‘I mean; what can he do for us now? He might be nothing more than Sephiroth’s shadow, and look at what he’s already done!’ Here, he gestures angrily at meteor, high above their heads and looming red and angry. ‘What more can he do? What can he do for the world? What did he ever do for it?’

These are existential questions that Cid doesn’t have a want or ability to answer, and he supposes, from the look on Barret’s face, that he doesn’t really _want_ an answer, which is fine by him.

They stand in silence for a moment. Cid wants to say something to the doctor, anything, just assure him that his daughter is alright, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It hurts, in his gut, because he doesn’t know that Shera’s alright. The fucking meteor is above their heads, and they’re going to _die_ if they don’t do something. She’d been alright not a week ago, packing them lunches and looking at him with her eyes so big and full of hope and so many things she hasn’t said, but Cid could hear, if he chose to listen.

‘Whether or not your friend is able to find himself again,’ Doctor Crescent says, ‘he will be well cared for here. It’s been a long time since we had Mako poisoning here, but we have all the relevant equipment and notes. We can do what we can for him.’

Cid nods. ‘Thank you.’

The door behind them swings open, and Tifa steps back into the sunlight. She looks red-raw around the eyes, too-tight in the mouth. Tired, worn out.

‘You okay?’ Barret asks.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I – I’ve been worrying you all lately, and I’ve – I’ve made a decision.’

Cid knows what she’s going to say. Barret knows what she’s going to say. Carefully, Tifa disconnects the materia from her glove and armlet, holds them in her hand and stares at them.

‘I’m going to stay,’ she says, ‘here, with Cloud. It’s – it’s not that I don’t care about what’s happening, because I do, you know I do. But I – I care about him more.’

Barret nods, and says, ‘yeah, that’s probably the right choice, for you and him both.’

Tifa offers him a shaky smile, and holds out the materia.

‘Yeah,’ Cid agrees, as Barret takes the offering, ‘you do what’s right for you, kid. Hang in there.’

Fucking idiotic thing to say, but he’s said it now.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tifa says, ‘I’m leaving you all in a bad place now.’

Cid snorts, and throws it all in. ‘Tifa, you stay with us and the fight, you ain’t gonna be any fucking use to us. Better you stay here and try and get him back, than you come with us and worry yourself sick.’

‘Fuck you apologising for, anyway?’ Barret adds, ‘ain’t like we’re never gonna see you again, is it? We’ll come back and check on you, of course we will, right, Cid?’

‘Obviously,’ Cid nods, though he knows, and knows that Barret knows, that visits will be few and far between.

Tifa chews on her thumbnail, looking lost, and so like a fucking child, and fuck sake, Cid barely remembers being twenty. He can’t imagine facing this level of bullshit at that age, and Tifa’s done well to take on what she has already. She deserves a rest, a break. It won’t be much of one, wiping Cloud’s drool off his chin and changing his catheter, but if it makes her happy. He supposes they’re all going to die one day soon, and she might as well go out with the man she loves, even if he is little more than a vegetable.

‘Hey,’ Barret says then, and Cid hopes he’s not about to say some bullshit. But it’s Barret, so of course he is. ‘I don’t want to – sound cruel – but is he really your childhood friend? Not just – a shadow?’

Tifa’s eyes water, but she blinks it back, and she nods. ‘He is. I’m sure of it. I don’t think he remembers it himself, but I know he is. Something bad happened to him, but he’s – he’s still my Cloud.’

Her Cloud. Cid huffs out a breath, and stubs the cigarette out with his boot.

‘We better get back to the ship,’ he says, ‘we got a lot to do.’

Barret nods, and gives Tifa a tight, foot-lifting hug, whispers to her, promises to visit and assurances that it’ll be alright, he’s sure.

‘Say, Captain?’ Doctor Crescent calls, as Cid’s about to walk away.

‘Yeah?’

‘You’ll say hello to her, won’t you? For us?’

Cid wrinkles his nose for a second, baffled by the request.

‘What the fu – oh, yeah. Yeah. Next time I talk to her, sure. I’ll let her know.’

‘It’s been nice to finally meet you.’

‘You too, I guess,’ Cid shrugs, and off he goes.

* * *

They’re walking back to the _Highwind_ , and Barret says that he thinks Cloud will be in safe hands with Doctor Crescent.

‘Crescent?’ Vincent asks, and Barret hums, not really paying attention.

‘Yeah, that’s the doc’s name, why? You know him?’

‘Not him,’ Vincent says, and trails off, wandering into a corner again, to brood, Cid supposes.

‘Weirdo,’ Barret says, and they finish boarding.

Cid gets them airborne, pulls his goggles down, and sits against the console unit. He’s tired. He’s always tired these days, but he’s fucking bone-deep exhausted. They’re down two members of the party, one of which is fucking _useful_ in terms of her sheer fighting force. She’s a good kid, besides. They’re all going to get malnutrition now she’s gone, and he’d joke about it, if now was the time. But now is not the time, and instead he closes his eyes and lets Barret take over, because that’s what Barret’s good at. They’re airborne, what Barret wants to do next is up to him.

He’s down barely five minutes, hasn’t even really gotten to get down, all things really considered, when Barret’s yelling jolts him awake again.

‘Huh? Fuck you want now? Ship crashing? No, fuck off.’

He hasn’t even opened his eyes, and refuses to do so. Fuck Barret and his nonsense. Fuck the lot of them. He’s going to go down to the engine room at this rate, just bunk down behind one of the units and refuse to leave.

‘You’ve been elected leader of these assholes,’ Barret says.

‘Pain in the ass,’ Cid replies, because that’s exactly what it is, and there’s no use in lying about it. ‘Forget it.’

But he’s awake now, even though his eyes are itching, and he shoves his goggles up, gets to his feet to look Barret in his haggard, tired face, and see the frustration of the entire world there. Barret doesn’t like it any more than Cid does, but he’s obviously thought it over, and Cid’s the next most sensible person on the list, and competent enough besides. Cid wonders what the fuck kind of people Barret’s been around that Cid is considered either sensible or competent.

Barret rolls his eyes, waves his hand around, gesturing at the ship around them.

‘Listen, jackass,’ he says, which is fair, because Cid is a jackass. ‘We’re gonna save the Planet, and to that, we’re gonna need the _Highwind_. Ain’t nobody else gonna be Captain while you’re here, so ain’t nobody else going to be able to run this shit.’

Cid snorts. ‘So that’s why I’m leader? ‘Cause it’s my ship? Fucking compliment that, cheers, mate.’

He even gives Barret a sarcastic little round of applause, to really hammer it home. Jackass, indeed.

Barret scoffs, and shakes his head. ‘Cid, for fuck sake.’

‘It’s gonna be tough,’ Cid replies, and pulls a cigarette out of the pack, taps it against his lips. ‘It’s going to be real fucking tough, Barret. We’re on our arses here, we’re up against it. And you want me to lead this bunch?’

‘We aren’t that bad,’ Red protests, but he says it like he feels he has to say it. They absolutely are that bad, and he knows it.

‘Someone’s got to do it,’ Vincent adds, because he’s as much of a jackass as Cid is. ‘And if not you, then who? The crew are yours, the ship is yours.’

Cid rolls his eyes some more. ‘For fuck sake, you’re wounding me. Going straight through my heart with all this confidence boosting talk. Fine, fuck sake, I’ll wave my dick about if it helps you feel like you’re getting somewhere. What’s the plan?’

Barret looks like he can’t believe how much of a jackass Cid is. That’s fine, Cid can’t believe himself half the time.

‘We need to go to Corel,’ he says, ‘ShinRa are after the Huge Materia in the reactor. We need to get there first.’

Cid chews on the filter of his cigarette, and then waves a hand in the direction of the door. ‘Let’s go to the Operation Room,’ he says, ‘we can talk more there, let these kids focus on piloting towards Corel. Boys, Corel, sharpish!’

The crew at their stations salute, heels snapping, and the _Highwind_ makes a leisurely about-turn to direct them towards Corel.

In the Operation Room, they discuss what the plan actually _is_.

Barret doesn’t seem to have thought it through any further than getting the Huge Materia from ShinRa, which is all Cid needs, to be honest, he doesn’t need any more than that. Just fuck with ShinRa, that’s fine by him.

‘When we put our smaller materia next to it,’ Red tells them, paws up on the table and chin on them in turn, ‘something should happen. I don’t know what, though, I’ve just heard Grandfather talk about it.’

‘We’ll get the Huge Materia,’ Cid says, ‘and then go pick his brains, I guess. Are there more than the one in Corel?’

‘Four,’ Cait tells them. ‘There’s one in Corel, and there’s one in the reactor at Fort Condor.’

‘Good luck getting it from that bird,’ Yuffie snorts. ‘It won’t move for anything.’

‘I don’t know about the others,’ Cait admits, ‘just that there are four. I’d guess they’ve already got two, if they haven’t talked about retrieving them. I’ll keep listening, just in case.’

Cid nods. ‘So Corel first. The mad bastards down at the Fort will be able to hold ShinRa for a couple days, no doubt.’ He looks at Barret. ‘And you wouldn’t have it any other way.’

Barret flushes, a little. ‘No,’ he says, but he says it with conviction, which is nice.

So with a nod of his head, it’s agreed that Cid, Barret and Yuffie will go to Corel, because Yuffie opened her mouth, which is all Cid needs, and though he won’t really talk about it, some small part of him wants to keep her close; the way she’d talked about Aerith, that small, quiet sadness in her eyes when they’d talked of Mideel, he wants her where he can keep an eye on her.

Also he still doesn’t trust her, but you know. Whatever he can avoid admitting is something he doesn’t need to talk about.

Yuffie goes off to be sick some more, and the rest of the team just sort of, float about, doing their thing. Barret stays behind while Cid makes notes on the map on the far wall, just to keep himself busy until they reach Corel. It doesn’t really need doing, he’s got plenty else to be getting on with, but it’s something more than nothing.

‘Hey,’ Barret says, ‘about Tifa, and Cloud.’

‘Yeah?’

‘We’re not going to leave them behind, are we?’

Cid shakes his head. ‘No, not a chance. I don’t – I don’t know if Mideel is the place for him to stay, but – fuck man, I don’t know. If the Doc says it’s that bad, then, maybe he doesn’t have long left. It’s a fucking horrible thing to say, I know, but you – you have to think about it.’

‘Mako poisoning,’ Barret murmurs, and fiddles with the edge of the table, where someone had knocked into it and pulled the edging loose. ‘It looked bad. You know anything about it?’

‘Not really,’ Cid says, ‘I wasn’t ever on the ground during the war – well no, if I was, I wasn’t around the rest of the troops until I got discharged. I heard about it. There was a fair bit of talk about it, back at the beginning. No one knew what it was, some fuck up with the SOLDIER program was what I heard about it.’ He shrugs, and draws an arrow pointing to the reactor at Fort Condor. ‘Who’s to say what the fuck was going on? If Cloud dies, Tifa ain’t gonna want to come back, we gotta accept that. It’ll be a shame, she’s fucking good in a fight, but we can’t make her do anything. She’s already lost one friend, losing Cloud will destroy her.’

‘Then we gotta get the Huge Materia,’ Barret says, ‘and maybe that’ll help him. We can use it against Sephiroth, and maybe that will convince him!’

Cid huffs out something that’s almost a laugh.

‘Maybe,’ he nods. ‘Maybe. We’ll have to think about that. Keep hope, as the Doc said.’

‘About the Doc,’ Barret says, and the frown on his face tells Cid he isn’t going to want to answer what Barret says next. ‘He said to say hello to someone for him. He mean Shera?’

Cid hesitates for a second, and truth be told, he doesn’t really know why. But he’s saved from answering, or justifying his hesitation, by the buzz of the intercom.

‘Captain, we’re approaching Corel now. Two minutes to landing.’

Cid nods, and gestures at the door.

‘Better get ready, then, eh?’

Barret leaves, and Cid lingers for a second, hand on his PHS. He _should_ call Shera, tell her that he went to Mideel. He hasn’t spoken to her all week, she’s probably worrying herself sick about what’s happened. The Junon thing has been all over the news, they heard it on a radio station in Mideel, so it’s not like she doesn’t know about the _Highwind_ ’s involvement in rescuing two certified criminals due for execution. She’ll have worked herself into a fret over whether they’re all alright.

So he should call her, let her know that Cloud’s been found in Mideel, that Tifa’s staying with him, that he saw the Doctor. He should tell her all of these things. He should tell her more than that, things that he should have told her years ago, things that he’s been too fucking afraid to admit.

He should.

But instead he pulls his lighter out instead, lights a cigarette, and goes to the bridge to supervise the landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a retro kid full of nostalgia and heat stroke, R&R is my life and soul


	8. Fight On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cid puts his Captaincy to good use, and leads the gang through the first half of the worst half of his life.
> 
> [Corel, Condor and Mideel]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language, as always. Blood. Some sadness.
> 
> Also, I have handed in all of my evidence, and pending the exam board, I am now officially a teacher! Utter lunacy lmao.
> 
> Enjoy, lovelies~!

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep, but his knees are getting tired. They’re aching in a way he hasn’t had achy knees since he was seven and first threw himself off the roof of the house. His father had gone _mental_ , yelling and hooting and hollering and _Planet_ , Cid had never wanted to jump again. Okay, so he broke his ankle, but for fuck sake, he was seven, and little Johnny across the way was giving him shit about how he was _bad blood_. Like blood means a single fucking thing, and sure, he hadn’t forgiven his father for three weeks, but fucking hell, his knees haven’t hurt like that since. And it’s not like he’s getting _old_ , he’s only _thirty-two_ , and even by ShinRa employee standards, that’s not old.

‘I’m tired of this shit,’ he says, and then he hears Yuffie’s feet before she springs into a somersault over his head, and he’s really going to end up with a hernia if she carries on. ‘Will you _stop_ doing that!’

‘You’re just getting old,’ she calls over her shoulder, and he’s so ready to shout at her.

‘Ain’t worth it, dude,’ Barret huffs behind him, and Cid supposes they’ve both got an advantage over the bloke.

Barret ain’t made to jump like this, and Cid supposes it’s not fair to moan about his knees.

Doesn’t mean they don’t ache, though.

‘One day, she’s going to miss her landing,’ Cid says instead and Barret snorts.

‘Nah, that’d be too convenient,’ he replies, and Cid is doing a lot of supposing these days to be supposing that he’s got a point. ‘We’re nearly there, anyway. Reactor’s just up this track.’

It takes them another twenty or so minutes to finish running their way along the track and up the hill to where the reactor looms, a dark, shadowed hole in the earth. Monsters are more plentiful here, but nothing they can’t handle.

‘The Huge Materia’s got to be in there,’ Barret says, and they look at the reactor.

‘It’s going to be a fight,’ Cid says, because it will be.

Barret nods. Yuffie whirls her shuriken around her hand.

‘We can take ‘em,’ she declares, loud, and off she goes.

‘Fucking _child_!’ Cid yells after her, and they have to put rockets up their asses to catch up. The bridge to the reactor’s gate is rickety as all fuck, and Cid isn’t convinced it’ll take their weight, never mind the weight of a train.

‘It’ll be fine!’ Barret assures him, shoving at his back, ‘we got no time to be scared now! Move!’

They get to the gate just as it rises, and they have to leap out of the way, because with a whistle, and a horn, and a billow of smoke, the train looms out of the darkness inside.

‘Fuck, it’s the Huge Materia!’ Barret exclaims, and they can see it twinkling on one of the carriages.

‘It’s coming at us!’ Cid barks, and shoves Yuffie hard, ‘outta the way!’

The train goes past, trundling at a mockingly slow speed, and all they can do is. Stand there and watch it.

‘Shit!’ Barret snarls, and Cid bites hard on his lip, clenches his fist.

‘Alright,’ he says, ‘alright, let me think.’

Yuffie throws a hand in the direction it’s going, disappearing over the bridge. ‘It’s getting away!’

‘I can see that!’ Cid hollers back, ‘Fucking hell, do you know who I am? Let me handle it!’

He racks his brains, but can see only one option. These reactors, they have to have more than one train to be able to make the most profit on transportation, and ShinRa haven’t been doing a lot with this reactor lately, which means, hopefully – he darts inside, careful not to melt his boots on the heat of the tracks, and – there!

It doesn’t take him long to kickstart the engine; it’s harder to get the plate turned to get the train leaving instead of going deeper into the reactor, but as soon as it’s started, he’s hollering to the morons outside.

‘Get on! We’re going after them!’

Barret looks – sceptical is a generous term – but he grabs the railing and hauls himself onto the open cab, and Yuffie flips up onto it, because she’s an asshole who just has to show off.

‘Okay,’ Cid nods, and looks at the control panel. ‘Okay, let’s see.’

‘You know what you’re doing?’ Barret asks.

‘Not a fucking clue!’ Cid laughs back, because you have to laugh at these things. ‘I’m a flyboy, not a railboy.’

‘Railboy isn’t a term,’ Yuffie tells him, and he politiely requests that she shut her fucking mouth.

‘It can’t be that hard,’ he shrugs, and yanks on a lever.

The train jerks, picks up speed. He yanks the other; it jerks again.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘right. Looking at the train in front of us. Okay. Right, hang onto your britches, fuckers. We’re running that bitch down.’

Manual work like this, moving levers to speed the train up in such a way as to catch up with the train in front of them, it’s both good and bad for his health. He likes the monotony of the job, the concentration needed to make sure he stays in rhythm and doesn’t take them off the rails – though really, there’s a metaphor for how this entire journey, this entire mission, has never been on the rails to come off them – but once he’s in that rhythm, this is what he’s good at, and it’s giving him space to think, and all the wrong sort of thoughts find room in his brain.

Thoughts about how Aerith would be having the time of her life now, how she’d asked him question after question about the vehicles they’d had, how she wanted to see the _Highwind_ , how she’d seen it parked in Junon that one time they’d been there. He thinks about Shera, the way he always thinks about Shera, the way she’d give him that smile that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, if she saw him working on a _train_. She’d probably tease him about how he’s lowered his expectations a bit, going from the stars to the ground. He thinks about ShinRa, how they’re probably going to die, trying to save the Planet, and how Rufus is a _bitch_ for putting them in this position in the first place.

He thinks about the Doctor, how he should have said something.

He wonders if he’s old enough to be considered mature now, if this is maturity coming in. Sometimes, despite the jadedness, and the bitterness, and the aggression, and the arguable common sense, he feels no more a grown-up than the kid he was when he first walked into the ShinRa building to put his name forward for his pilot’s license, for the war. He doesn’t feel very grown up at all.

Yuffie is wailing behind him, because they’re going faster and faster, and the train is catching up, and he supposes he has to be a grown-up now.

‘Cid, you’re gonna hit it!’ Barret hollers, and Cid yanks on the levers, elbows jolting.

‘Jump!’ he yells back, and they scramble to do just that.

Behind them, as they hit the train in front, grabbing onto whatever railing they can to keep themselves aboard, the train loses its place on the tracks, concertinas into itself and disappears off the edge of the mountain, crashing and smashing onto the valley bed, smoke and flame.

‘Fucking hell,’ Barret says, which just about sums it up.

Cid takes a second to rally himself, and then he hauls himself onto the top of the carriage.

‘Come on,’ he says, ‘we’ve got to get that cab, stop this train. We’ve got – we haven’t got enough time to piss about!’

There’s resistance, because there’s always resistance, but Barret is sensible, holds back to provide air support. Yuffie disappears and reappears with her shuriken a blur of shining metal, and Cid. Well, Cid hasn’t got the room to swing his spear, never mind a cat, so he goes with good old fashioned fisticuffs, and lands a smooth drop-kick in on one of the troops thinking they can do anything about what’s in front of them.

Cid drops neatly into the cab, and Barret follows him down. Yuffie clings to the top and watches behind them for anything else.

‘We gotta slow it down!’ Barret says, ‘this track leads straight into Corel!’

Cid exhales hard once, nods. The levers are red-hot under his hands, but he holds on tight. If yanking them forward speeds the train up, then yanking them _backwards_.

He tries it. The train jerks, but doesn’t seem to slow down.

‘Fucking hell!’ Barret yells, right in his ear, because Barret is a fucking _asshole_. ‘You’re gonna derail us!’

‘You wanna fucking do it?’ Cid yells back, right in _his_ ear, because Cid is also an asshole. ‘Fuckin’ let me concentrate!’

‘Guys!’ Yuffie yells, just to feel like part of the team, ‘I can see the banner!’

Cid’s arms are aching with the effort of holding the levers down, and he really doesn’t think it should be like this. The troops had jammed them, he figures, and kicks at the box the levers protrude from. The train jerks again, and begins to skid. The wheels lock.

‘Yes!’ Barret roars, because the screeching of the wheels means one thing; the train is _slowing down_. ‘Come on, come on!’

Yuffie thumps the carriage beneath her. ‘You got this, come on! Stop!’

Cid braces his feet, leans his whole weight on the levers and screws his eyes shut against the reality that they aren’t slowing down _fast enough_. The impact will probably kill them.

 _Oh, behave_.

He feels it more than he hears it. The wheels screech some more, and then the screeching lowers in pitch, slows, and stops. With a whine, and a moan, and a gentle _thump_ , the train hits the bumper, and settles.

‘We alive?’ he asks.

‘Kind of fucking stupid question is that?’ Barret laughs, and leaps down from the train to rush off back to the carriage housing the Huge Materia.

Yuffie leaps down next to him, and the rattle of the boards beneath his feet makes his knees knock.

‘You did good, old-timer!’ she crows, clapping him on the back hard enough to make his eyes spin. ‘Thought for a second we were gonna be gonners! Barret! Wait up, I wanna see the Materia!’

And then she’s gone. Cid slowly lets go of the levers, and sinks to the boards, exhales without breathing.

‘That was you,’ he whispers, ‘wasn’t it?’

He feels the smile behind his eyes, and leans back against the railing, pats himself down for his lighter, needs a cigarette.

Vaguely, he becomes aware of the sound of talking, and he drags himself up in time to see the crowd forming around the train. Barret is at the centre of it, looking sheepish, but nodding and smiling. Yuffie’s got a look of – he’s not sure what it is. Admiration, maybe. Pride.

‘Cid!’ Barret calls, waves his arm. ‘C’mere, look at this.’

Cid plods over, his knees aching, his chest tight, sore. Eyes tired. Barret is holding a piece of green materia, no bigger than a child’s palm, and Cid sees the flash of magic inside.

‘It’s Ultima,’ Barret says, and holds it out. It feels hot in Cid’s hand when he takes it, even through his gloves, as hot as the levers had. ‘Powerful magic, that. They said we could have it, as thanks for stopping the train.’

‘ShinRa would have destroyed our lives again,’ one of the men gathered says, with a dark frown on his face. ‘We’ve had enough of them to last us a lifetime. Say, you all look beat. I spoke with the Innkeeper, he agreed to let you rest for free, you look like you need it.’

‘Have we got time?’ Cid asks, looking at Barret. ‘Fort Condor’s gonna be swamped.’

Barret nods. ‘We’ve got time enough to heal up. You look like you’re about to pass out, can’t be a good Captain if you’re unconscious.’

Cid nods, and scrapes his hands through his hair, digs the fingertips of his gloves into his scalp. Just five minutes, it’s all he needs, really.

He’s getting too old for this shit.

* * *

It’s dark when he wakes, and he’s disorientated for a moment. Then it comes flooding back, but his muscles aren’t so sore now, which is something.

‘Cure3,’ the Innkeeper says, when Cid sits up, rubbing his neck. ‘You should be good as new.’

‘Should,’ Cid snorts. ‘Take a lot more than that to me right these days.’

‘The others are outside,’ the Innkeeper says, and Cid feels a sudden rush of – he doesn’t know.

He misses home. He misses the _Shanghai_ , he misses John and Reine, and he misses sitting in the bar and waiting for Shera to come down so he could pick her brains over the blueprints.

‘Thanks.’

‘Stay safe out there, ShinRa ain’t gonna like that you ruined their plans.’

‘Whole point, eh?’ Cid shrugs, and steps out of the tent.

Yuffie is bouncing around with a group of kids, trying to teach them how to backflip, even though it’s too dark to see the ground safely, and they should, really, be in bed. Cid shakes his head, but leaves her to it; if she’s where he can see her, and she’s occupied, she’s out of trouble. That’s all he needs from her right now. Barret is chatting, quietly, to a young woman by the well, rubbing his neck and scuffing his feet. Cid is not naïve enough to think it a romantic conversation; there is too much sadness in Barret’s shoulders, too much shame in his toecaps. He watches them for a second, and then it comes to him; his sister-in-law, perhaps. Some relative of his wife, anyway, the way that Cid supposes a lot of the people in North Corel are extended family.

‘Thank you,’ he hears Barret say, and he picks up a fucking massive gun off the side of the well. ‘I owe you for this.’

The woman waves him off. ‘Myrna would want you to have the best chance of getting ShinRa off the Planet, and I ain’t gonna deny her that.’

Barret nods, and turns, sees Cid stood there. He doesn’t flinch, or look embarrassed, which is a credit to him, to be honest. Cid knows he looks embarrassed about breathing half the time.

‘You ready?’ he asks, instead, and Cid nods. ‘Aite. Thanks again. Yuffie, we’re moving out!’

‘You ain’t the boss of me!’ she hollers back, but obligingly cartwheels her way over, and flips to her feet, only to trip over a rock three steps later.

‘How are you so clumsy?’ Cid asks, extending a hand to help her up. She nearly pulls him over by grabbing his arm, but he lets her have it.

‘Always was,’ she shrugs, ‘otherwise I’d be too powerful, and I’d run this universe.’

Cid privately thinks that it’s a blessing, because a universe run by Yuffie would be one powered by terrible dietary choices. He glances at Barret; he looks like he’s thanking the Lifestream for the same thing.

‘Come on,’ Cid says, ‘we should be able to get to the Fort by dawn if we’re smart about it.’

* * *

There’s no splitting the team for this one; the sight of ShinRa marching on the Fort before they’ve even parked the _Highwind_ is telling them that, loud and clear.

‘As soon as we’re off,’ Cid says to the pilot, ‘get her back in the air. We’re gonna need air support on this one. Everyone equipped? Let’s go!’

They barely have time to see the lay of the land, to get their instructions, before the troops are marching, and then the only option is to fight, and keep fighting. Cid orders them to stay in line of sight of each other, but Yuffie’s having none of it, and disappears within seconds. A few minutes after that, it becomes clear that it just isn’t viable. They can’t stay in line of sight, and they certainly can’t stay in hearable distance. They’re together, but they might as well be fighting alone.

Cid spins his spear, looks at the machines accompanying the troops, the wide-eyed _children_ in their uniforms, fresh as a fucking daisy. He looks at the soldiers, if they can be called that. They’re barely out of fucking _nappies_.

It’s going to be a long fucking day.

And the troops just don’t stop coming.

* * *

Cid's hands are shaking, fingers tingling, as they collect themselves, beginning the slow trudge back up the mountain to the safety of the fort. He slips on a rock and Yuffie catches his belt, keeps him on his feet.

'Are you alright?’ she asks, looking at him funny, and for half a second, there's three of her, five, half of one.

‘Fine,’ Cid assures, but it comes out tight, froggish, hardly a word at all.

She twists her lips, eyebrows creased, but carries on up the mountain regardless, whistling a merry little tune to herself.

He thinks to himself that he needs to stop smoking, because he's finding it hard to breathe. He can still hear the explosions from the _Highwind_ , the snap and bang of the bones and the earth and he chokes on the dust in his throat. Catching himself, little more than his fingertips on the dirt in front of him, he takes a breath, two, clears his throat and doesn't get any breath back for his trouble.

‘Fucking grow up,' he tells himself, choking the words out in the general direction of his boots, which is what he’s looking at.

So the _Highwind_ did as he ordered to help them battle back the ShinRa troops. So fucking what. It's not like it's such a bad thing, they needed some extra fire power, they're down two teammates, and something had to give. Okay, so. So it's - it's like - it's what he imagined being on the ground would be like. He was in the plane, during the war, he never saw it from the other side. This is probably what it was like.

He looks back down the mountain; there are craters, where the grenades hit. Bodies. They've knocked out who they could, and there are a few casualties. There had to be. It was kill or be killed, and Cid was not so naive as to think they would be able to avoid killing anyone. Fuck, he ordered grenades to be dropped. That's not going to let anyone survive.

He gets his feet under him, a flat section of mountain where he can brace his hands on his knees and breath deep once, twice. He coughs, his heart jackhammering against his ribs and fucking hell, he's so unfit! He's so fucking unfit and all he does is smoke! Shera fed him up well, and he did a daily five-kilometre round trip of the town when he was there. Had it down to a little over twenty minutes! He was healthy enough, but fuck smoking is taking it out of him!

He's woozy when he stands, but he supposes he hasn't eaten in over a day, they didn't really have time for anything before the battle started, and mountain air is thin. He grew up in mountain air, used to look over the edge of the cliff to the bones being dug up, watched them piece together dragons, and he used to breathe the frost in. But it's been a long time since he did, and he supposes the smoking and the smog of Midgar are making his lungs weak, and it's hard to get your brain working when you've got bad lungs.

A deep, hard swallow like a razor blade against the rabbit kick of his heart in his throat, and he starts the trek again.

Not long now.

He should call Shera, make sure she's alright.

By the time he gets all the way up the mountain and back to the fort, he feels like he needs to throw up. It’s just hunger though, he's sure. It has to be, because what else is there for it to be?

Instinctively, he lights a cigarette, but fumbles the lighter, drops it and the cigarette and just stands there staring at them, blurry on the floor, and not bending to pick them up.

He curls his fingers in one by one, making a fist with each hand, and opens them again. It was one of the things Reine taught him to do. He'd laughed at her when she told him to breathe because of bad dreams, so she'd told him to do that instead, focus on each finger moving in sequence.

‘Cid? Dude, you're sweating, you that old now?’

It sounds very far away, and he blinks, tries to focus on it, on the voice. Barret. It's Barret, taking the piss because he's unfit.

Cid looks at his hands. His gloves have blood on, and he yanks them off, throws them as far as he can.

‘I,’ he starts, but doesn't know how to continue the sentence, let alone finish it.

‘Wow!’ Yuffie exclaims from somewhere even further away than Barret. ‘Come look at this, old-timers! Its beautiful!’

Barret claps Cid on the arm, and disappears under the wave of nothing that seems to be creeping closer.

Cid looks back down the mountain, the bodies and the craters and the general mess that has come from the battle. How is it beautiful, he wonders, how can Yuffie see anything and think it beautiful, when this is what they just did? But then, he supposes, this was her childhood. Bombed out fields and corpses in blue uniforms.

He kicks the lighter a couple of feet away when he stumbles past it, his legs rubber and concrete all at once. His ankles ache with the weight of him, and he has to grab the table to keep himself upright.

His head is spinning, his heart trying to beat out of his chest - is he having a heart attack? Is this what it is? He - he's that unfit now, his body that fucked by cigarettes that he's having a heart attack after a couple hours' hard labour? Fuck sake.

His eyes sting, and he wipes them, which makes it worse, rubs the sweat in. He grips the table tight enough to make his nails hurt, make them bend away from his fingers. He breathes, but there's no air.

Is this how he dies? Dies because he's unfit and there's dead bodies everywhere and he's - he's not told Shera that he - that's he's really rather desperately - that he wants to -

He clenches his fist, one finger at a time. Reine.

Stumbling to the door, any door, ankles and knees in entirely different minds about what they need to do to propel him forwards, he reaches for his pocket, pats it down.

Instinct lets him dial the _Shanghai_ 's number. He presses the PHS to his ear, listens to it ring once, twice, three times, then the line connects.

‘Good afternoon, you've reached the _Shanghai_ at Rocket Town.’

Hearing her voice is a blessing, but a hard one, one he has to strain for.

‘Reine,’ he says, and hopes to whatever the Planet might think of him that she hears him, because he's not sure he's speaking.

‘Captain!’ she exclaims. ‘I didn't expect you to call, is everything alright? I haven't seen Shera today, is she not picking up?’

It hits him like a punch between the eyes. Shera. Reine hasn't seen her, is she alright? Why hasn't Reine heard from her, what's Shera doing that keeps her from the inn? It's not like ShinRa are sending students over at the moment, with this disaster of a crisis above their heads. She usually stops by the inn mid-morning to check up on things and help out if errands need running. If she's not there then - then - she'd said ShinRa had been sniffing around when Cid first left town, but have they come back? He'd said that Shera would be a target, that they'd get her and make an example of her. Have they done that? Is that why she's not been around yet? Because ShinRa have killed her? Put her on display as a reminder to everyone else? If Shera's dead, he's going to – to –

‘Cid,’ Reine says, very firmly. ‘I need you to listen to me. She's fine. I haven't seen her, but she said she's going to be working on a couple projects this week while she's got the time. She's around the town somewhere, you know this. She's safe, Cid. She's not going anywhere.’

‘But where?’ Cid asks, breathes it out between his teeth.

Reine takes a breath that rattles inside his head, and he breathes in return.

‘She’s probably still at home. Have you called her?’

‘No.’

The word comes out of him too fast and not fast enough; whining, pitched too high and too fearful, and Reine breathes again, a softer breath this time, and she asks if his pack is nearby. She has to ask it three times before he is able to respond appropriately, and he nods.

‘Cid, I can’t see you.’

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Go to it,’ she tells him, gentle and firm, stone weighing down silk. ‘Look inside.’

Reine cannot possibly know what is in his pack, but the part of Cid that isn’t panicking, that doesn’t have his breath ripping in and out of his throat like it doesn’t belong there, the part of him that’s not seeing double and can’t hear the bustle of the Fort over his ears, he trusts that she knows him well enough to know that sending him to his pack is a good idea.

It’ll be full of dirty socks and unwrapped cigarettes. But there’s also a book that Shera put in there, for him to read on the nights he can’t sleep – which is a bold assumption, because he’d find literally anything to do except read – and it smells of her. He holds it to his nose and breathes the citrus of her soap in, deep, gulping breaths. He forgets he has the PHS for a moment, absorbed in the smell of fruit.

He breathes once, twice, three times, and then Reine asks him if he’s with her.

‘I’m,’ he says, and she hums.

‘I understand,’ she replies. ‘There’s been reports of a skirmish out Condor way, is that you?’

‘Yes.’

She hums again. ‘You’re alright?’

‘Yes.’

‘The others?’

‘Alive.’

‘ShinRa?’

‘Fucked.’

She falls silent for a moment. Cid keeps breathing in the smell of the book, citrus and fresh under the staleness coming in from his breath caught between the pages. He hasn’t drank anything since the pre-dawn tea he drank cold because he was too busy trying to guide the trainee pilot through an ocean storm in the dark to drink it hot.

‘Cid, tell me something.’

He grunts, and she hums, her fingers drumming on the counter.

‘Are you sleeping?’

He opens his mouth and then hesitates. Reine knows him too well to not know when he’s lying, but she knows that he knows, and so she expects him to tell the truth, which means if he lies, she won’t be expecting it. But he doesn’t like lying to her, and the six months they’d not spoken because he got his arse in his hand over Palmer’s initial visit to the inn back in Midgar had hurt like fucking murder, and he doesn’t want to do that again. Life, he’s learnt, all too clearly, is too short for that. He can’t afford the secrecy, the lies.

‘No,’ he sighs, after the hesitation has practically answered her for him.

‘I didn’t think so. I know there’s a lot going on, Shera’s told me what of it she knows, and I’m not young enough to think that’s the whole of it. And I know you don’t sleep, but you need to rest. You’ll burn out, and what good will you be to them then? I’ve seen them, they’re children, near enough, same as you were when we first met. You need to look after them, and you can’t do that if you’re dead on your feet. You need to rest.’

‘And everything else,’ he snorts, but she’s right, and he knows it.

She says nothing, which is almost worse.

‘I just – I want,’ he starts, but he can’t finish it.

‘Cid, you need to talk to Shera. She’ll be worried, and she’ll be hurt if she finds out you spoke to me without speaking to her.’

He knows this, of course he does. Talking to Shera has been on his mind for days. Ever since they went to Mideel, he knew he should call her, but he just – keeps putting it off. He has to, for his own sanity. She drives him fucking insane, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

‘Cid,’ Reine says, gentle.

‘Yeah?’

‘There’s no shame in it, you know.’

‘In what?’ he asks, jovial enough. His breath is shaky still, his heart hammering in his ribs, but he can smell citrus in his nose, and not a lot else, and that’s fine. The blood on his trousers and jacket have dried, and don’t smell of anything.

Reine sighs, and he can hear her open her mouth, but she says nothing in the end. She knows he won’t listen to it; he never does.

He hesitates for a second and then, ‘don’t tell her about this.’

‘I won’t breathe a word of it,’ Reine sighs, in the way a mother is sworn to secrecy, resigned to her fate keeping her children’s secrets. His mother would never be so nice to him, she’d have been on the phone to Shera faster than he could dial the number to beat her to it. ‘You can’t keep it from her though, Cid. Panic attacks are – ‘

‘Are things that don’t happen to me,’ he says, ‘and are things that have _never_ happened to me.’

Reine breathes hard through her nose, blistering in the earpiece of the PHS. ‘Cid.’

‘It’s fine! It’s just a bit of blood, nothing I haven’t seen before!’

And he hangs up, because he’s an asshole, and acknowledging that he’s just had a panic attack because he spent too long compartmentalising his life is something he’s not willing to do. There’s no disguising it, no beating around the bush, no pretending otherwise. That’s what it was, and he knows it, and Reine knows it, because Reine was there when he had the first one in Midgar, in the middle of the night when someone got into a fight in the street and he’d been delirious with lack of sleep, and she’d been there in Rocket Town, where Livas had said something absolutely innocuous that had him downing tools and staggering like a drunk into the Inn, convinced he was going to die. She’d done her best to help him, and she’d kept it from Shera, like he’d asked, because Shera didn’t need to know, it wasn’t her business. They’d talked it out, as much as Cid is ever able to open his mouth, and they’d agreed that Cid would try and work through some of the things he’d boxed up in his brain.

Cid, of course, had done absolutely nothing about it.

He boxes this up, too, because that’s what he does. He boxes it up and he puts it away where he can’t think about it anymore, and he can feel the disapproving looks from here.

‘Leave me alone,’ he grunts, but the walls say nothing back.

He takes a seat on the edge of the cot, next to his pack, strewn across the bed and the floor, and he stares at the PHS. He’d better call Shera. He wants to talk to her. He doesn’t know what he wants to say to her – well, he does, but he’s not _going_ to say it – but he wants to talk to her. Hear her voice, listen to her drone on about nothing that matters.

So he dials, before someone can distract him.

It rings once, twice, and then connects.

‘Hello?’

‘Shera,’ he says, and Shera’s happy little sigh fills his chest with – with – he doesn’t want to put a name on it, but it fills his chest anyway, and it’s better than smoke.

‘Captain!’ she sighs, ‘I’m glad to hear from you, I’ve been listening to the radio, I was getting worried.’

‘You shouldn’t be,’ he says with a shrug. ‘You know me, I’m not going to get into too much trouble. Not where ShinRa’s concerned, anyway.’

She scoffs, but doesn’t argue with him.

‘They didn’t say what was on the train, just that it was hi-jacked.’

‘They’re collecting Huge Materia,’ he says, ‘they think it’ll help them in the fight against Meteor.’

Shera hums. ‘I didn’t think it existed. I heard Scarlet talking about it, years ago, but I thought it was just theoretical.’

‘No,’ Cid says, shaking his head, ‘no, it’s real. Fucking is huge, as well. Size of a small child. Couldn’t pick it up by myself, took me an’ Barret to lift the fuckin’ thing.’

She laughs, just once. ‘But you’ve got it now?’

He nods. ‘We do. We’ve got two pieces now, from Corel and the Fort.’

‘I heard about that,’ she says, ‘the radio said that there was a skirmish. But the pirate station we’ve been listening to, the one that gives you the _actual_ news. They said it was – bad. Are you alright?’

For half a heartbeat, Cid hesitates, debates telling her. She knows about the stories, has heard so many of them before, what with nearly everyone on the builds being in the army. She’s heard enough that she’d understand. But fuck he doesn’t want to breathe a word of it to her. She doesn’t deserve to know about the blood under his nails, caked into the whorls of his fingertips, the creases of his knees, soaked through his trousers so thickly as to manage it.

She doesn’t deserve that bloodshed. Those nightmares.

‘Yeah,’ he says with a nod, ‘nothing we couldn’t handle. We’re – we’re down two.’

She gasps. ‘Not – ‘

‘No, no, not dead. Though – Cloud, he – he’s got Mako Poisoning. A real bad case. They’re – they’re in Mideel.’

‘They?’

‘Him and Tifa. She stayed behind to look after him.’

Shera hums at this, and then quietly, ‘you went to Mideel?’

Cid nods. ‘We did. Just ‘fore we went to Corel to get the Huge Materia. It’s the same as always.’

‘Is – Did you – did you see Dad?’

She’s hesitant, and he can’t say he blames her; she went home, once, years and years ago, after he said and did some truly ugly things – and he admits, to himself, that they were out of jealousy, because Isak had gotten her attention, and he’d been a spoilt brat, thinking he had her to himself, and why shouldn’t she have gone on a date with another mechanic, when he himself had never so much as intimated that he might like to do the same? They’d been jealous things, but they’d been ugly – and he has no doubt she told her parents all of those ugly things he said and did. He has no doubt the good doctor and his wife had a truly ugly picture of him because of it, and he can’t blame them.

‘Yeah,’ he says, quietly, and looks at his boots. ‘He looks well. He said to say hello. I – listen, before all this is over, before the Meteor – if the Meteor does – you should go back, while you have chance, go and see them.’

Shera sniffles, a little bit. It’s more of a sharp inhale, but he knows it’s a sniffle.

‘I couldn’t.’

‘I know you’ve brought the _Bronco_ back,’ he says, ‘no idea how you managed to get it without ShinRa getting hold of you, but it’s in the yard again, I saw it. I’ve shown you how to fly her, and you ain’t stupid enough to have forgotten. Take her over, go and see them.’

‘I – I can’t,’ she says.

‘Course you can, I trust you with the _Bronco_ , and you ain’t gonna have much longer to do it.’

‘No, Captain, I – I really _can’t_.’

She emphasises it in such a way that he’s sure he should hear something in it, but she could mean any number of things, the silly girl, and he just scoffs.

‘Suit yourself,’ he says, ‘but if we fuck this up and you don’t get to see them again, don’t you find me in the Lifestream to blame me.’

Shera laughs, wetly, and he’s made her cry. It’s not the first time, and he knows, in his bones, that it isn’t going to be the last.

‘Have you called them, at least?’ he asks.

‘Not this week, no,’ she says, ‘I’ve been – busy. I spoke to Mum, after you left with the _Highwind_.’

If he has to build another ship, if they pull this shit off, save the Planet, get through this mess. He’s going to name the next one after her.

‘She okay?’ he asks.

Shera nods. ‘She’s feeling a little down. It’s – it’s close to when. To when.’

But she can’t choke it out, and Cid doesn’t force her to.

‘But she’s okay,’ Shera adds, happy enough. ‘They said they have a boy wash up on the shore, and Dad was busy taking care of him.’

‘Cloud,’ Cid nods.

‘I guess so. You’re sure you’re alright?’ she asks, and Cid nods.

‘I’m sure. Just fucking exhausted. But ain’t no rest for the wicked.’

‘You aren’t wicked,’ she says, adamant, and he thinks, in that reflexive way he’s come to think such things, that he might like to marry her.

Cloud had already made that assumption, and he supposes – he supposes – he supposes he always did. In his own little way. He supposes, if he’s really fucking honest with himself, that he’d already made the decision that they were married when he first saw her, and he’d just never bothered to let her know.

‘Shera, I,’ he starts, and his throat closes up.

‘Yes?’

‘I – I just want to – I want you to know – ‘

The door bangs open; Vincent.

‘Cid,’ he says, in his morose little baritone, ‘Barret wishes to know what our next move is, he feels that we are losing time staying here.’

‘Captain?’ Shera asks, and the hopeful note in her voice makes something turn over in his belly.

‘I better go,’ he says, ‘I lo – I’ll talk to you soon.’

He tries not to hear how deflated she sounds when she says, ‘keep in touch. Stay safe.’

The line goes dead in his ear, and he’s never wanted to throttle Vincent as much as he does right now.

‘Come on, then,’ he grunts, waving a hand at the door. ‘We’d better get moving.’

‘What happened in here?’ Vincent asks, looking at the contents of Cid’s pack, strewn about the room.

‘Nothing to do with you, fuckface,’ Cid grunts back, and shoves it all in his pack.

Barret is waiting in the main area for him.

‘We should go back to Mideel,’ Cid says, ‘check up on Tifa and Cloud. I’m worried she’s going to collapse, taking care of him.’

Yuffie snorts. ‘Didn’t think you had it in you to care, old man.’

‘Stop calling me old!’ Cid hisses, but there’s very little malice in it, not really.

Yuffie snorts, and darts out of range, as though he’d even pretend to throw a mug at her.

‘I’m worried as well,’ Red admits.

Mideel, then,’ Cid nods, ‘come on, let’s move.

* * *

The flight to Mideel is quiet, contemplative, a little bit morose. The battle for the Fort had taken it out of all of them, and Cid doesn’t blame them for not wanting to linger around the cockpit. He points them to the bunks, and they all make their way down. Cid stays in the cockpit, chats to the crew.

It’s going to be a long flight, and he needs to sleep, to eat, to take five minutes, but he can’t stop, can’t sit, can’t rest.

‘Captain,’ the pilot says, his new badge shining brightly on his lapel, and Cid thinks it’s sweet, in a funny little way, that they have the badges to give him, the pride he has when Cid bumps him up another level on near enough a whim.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you think we have a chance?’ he asks, ‘against ShinRa?’

‘ShinRa ain’t the problem,’ Cid grunts, and points at Meteor, shining bright and red above their heads. ‘That’s the fucking problem. Don’t know what we’re gonna do about it. We’ll think of something, we always do.’

The pilot nods, and steers, just a little bit, to the right. ‘Do you – do you think we’ll be able to go home? Before it’s all over?’

Cid huffs out a laugh. ‘If it gets to that, you’ll all be able to go home, I’ll make sure of it. I ain’t gonna keep you from your kid, don’t worry about it.’

The pilot nods, flushed a little in his ears and a little wet in the eyes. ‘Thanks, Captain.’

‘Ain’t gonna come to that, though,’ Cid assures him, as best he can, ‘as I said, we’ll think of something. For now, let’s just get to Mideel, and we’ll worry about the rest later.’

* * *

Mideel is. Quiet.

Cid doesn’t trust it. Cid has never trusted a town that goes quiet in his life, and he orders Red and Vincent and Cait to stay at the entrance, takes Barret and Yuffie with him to the clinic.

‘I don’t like this,’ he says, and Barret nods.

‘Something’s coming,’ Barret replies.

Yuffie is oddly quiet beside them, and Cid doesn’t say anything to her, knows in his gut that she’s listening, that she’s waiting, that her attention isn’t on them, but on the air itself, on whatever is coming for them. They might have days, they might have minutes. He doesn’t know, and that’s the worst part of it.

The clinic is quiet and clean as it was when they first arrived, and the nurse looks concerned when they enter. Cid’s trousers are still stained with blood, and Barret’s black eye hasn’t quite healed properly.

‘You look exhausted,’ she says, ‘come, you should rest.’

‘We will,’ Cid assures her, and it doesn’t sound half the lie it is. ‘How is he?’

‘There’s no change,’ she says, sadly, ‘but I’m worried for her. She’s been by his side day and night; she’ll get sick if she doesn’t rest.’

‘She won’t listen,’ Barret tells her, gently, ‘she ain’t never listened to a word I ever said to her.’

‘I do listen,’ Tifa grumps from the other side of the curtain, ‘I just choose not to act on it.’

Barret huffs out a laugh, and Tifa pokes her head out through the curtain. She looks like she hasn’t slept, and she’s braided her hair to get it off her face, down the scalp though, not gathered at the back.

‘I – I’m worried,’ she admits, quietly. Her fingers knot around themselves, and then she breathes out a sigh. ‘He talks, sometimes, but I don’t understand a word of it.’

Cid feels his brow crease, his eyes soften. ‘Tifa,’ he says, and her lip wobbles.

‘What if he never gets better?’ she asks, ‘what if he – what if he’s like this for the rest of his life?’

Cloud sits in the chair next to her, creaking as his body sways the wheels to and fro, the machines he’s plugged into glittering and shining, freshly cleaned. Cid’s throat burns.

‘He will!’ Yuffie assures her, all of them, ‘he’ll get better in no time, ‘cause – ‘cause we got the Huge Materia, didn’t we? Barret said it’d help!’

Barret opens his mouth to explain, because Tifa looks confused, and how do you explain that you can’t fit two chunks of Materia, each the size of a child, into a clinic that barely fits the amount of adults it’s got in it already, but he’s interrupted by a fucking earthquake.

Tifa is knocked off her feet, and Yuffie pulls the curtain down in her attempt to stay upright. Cid’s used to having no ground beneath him, and plants his feet. Barret’s simply too big to be disturbed by it.

‘What was that?’ Tifa asks.

‘It’s big,’ the Doctor says, ‘we get the odd quake, but this – this is too big!’

Cloud moans from his chair, drool dripping down his chin. ‘They’re coming,’ he says, and they all look at him.

‘What?’ Cid asks, ‘Cloud, what did you say?’

But Cloud has nothing else to offer, just more gurgles and dribble.

Another shake of the earth, and the windows flash with lights outside, black and red and yellow and all the colours you could dream of. Cid rushes outside, and looks at the chaos of the town, so quiet just ten minutes ago. People are running, screaming, and the ground is splitting beneath their feet as they run.

‘Motherfucker!’ he yells, and Barret is quick to follow him.

‘Fuck,’ Barret says, too quiet for how wide his eyes are.

Fuck, indeed. There’s an odd screaming, moaning, coming from both beneath the ground and above their heads. The Lifestream, curling and boiling, angry and sad at once, and Cid doesn’t know what to do with the understanding that it’s both angry and sad. What does he _do_ with that knowledge? He can’t help it, he can’t do anything about it.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he says, as a shadow falls over them, ‘is that?’

‘That’s a fucking WEAPON,’ Barret breathes.

‘Of all the times for it to decide to attack,’ Cid snarls, ‘it chooses now! Does it _know_?’

‘Guys?’ Tifa asks from the doorway, and Yuffie appears at Cid’s shoulder. ‘What’s happening?’

‘It’s fine!’ Cid yelps back, his voice too tight, and he clears his throat. ‘Everything’s alright, go back inside.’

‘Cid,’ Tifa starts.

‘I ain’t gonna die,’ he scoffs. ‘Just – you go take care of Cloud. Make sure he’s safe. We’ll handle this.’

‘Be careful,’ Tifa says, and Cid waves her down.

The Planet is screaming beneath their feet, the Lifestream burning in their ears, which is to say nothing of the noise the WEAPON is making. Cid yanks his spear free of the doorway, where he’d put it again, and spins it in his hand, jogs off to the town square, where there’s space for him to move, and look. Yuffie is back at his shoulder, her knees bent ready, and Barret is bracing his gun arm in his hand, aimed and ready. It’s as good as it’s going to get, and the others appear behind them, ready and waiting.

The WEAPON circles again, and Cid draws a breath.

‘Come on, then, you bitch!’ he hollers.

At first, he doesn’t think it’s listening, or heard, or is even aware that he exists. And then it stops in midair, turns to look at them, it’s eyes shining like bright rubies against the blackness of its face.

He stares back at it. Grips his spear tight enough to hurt in the knuckles. Jerks his chin. Come on, then. Then it dives, and the battle is on.


	9. Stalling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rocket Town is not a town used to being told what to do, but Shera understands that some battles you wait to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for violence. ShinRa are bastards.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

It starts two days after the Captain leaves in the _Highwind_. Shera is used to seeing one or two ShinRa troopers stomping about, making themselves look big and powerful, when in reality they were little more than children. Certainly, they weren’t as old as Shera herself, nearly thirty now, and smart enough to know what she’s looking at. Barely out of training, most likely, looking at the smoothness of their jaws. Part of her worries, worries for their well-being and their mothers, back home wondering what happened to them. The stories of the war had been hard enough to hear, but she imagines, in the wake of that, that it had gotten worse. Whenever she sees them, she thinks of Cloud, of the shadows beneath his eyes and the sadness in his shoulders, and how it looks so like her Captain’s, but so much more entrenched, so much more – more – hollow.

So yes, she’s used to seeing the troops marching about like they own the place, but then, two days after the Captain makes off with the _Highwind_ to go and rescue Barret and Tifa, and try to save the world, she gets a knock on the door. She’s finally gotten around to washing the clothes the team had borrowed during their brief sojourn to the house, and she’s pegging them out on the line, so at first she doesn’t hear it, but then there’s another knock, and it’s louder. Frowning at the shirt half on the line, she puts the last peg on the line and dusts her hands off, goes back inside to go to the door.

It’s not someone from in town; they either let themselves in or go around the back, and then they go to the Inn if she’s in neither place. Knocking means it’s someone from out of town, and she feels a sharpness in her chest that makes her hesitate.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she tells the back door, and carefully leaves it open behind her.

At the front door, standing a respectful few steps away from the front step, stands a pretty blonde woman in a smart blue suit, and Shera might not really have left Rocket Town for almost a decade, but she wasn’t born yesterday. The woman is a Turk, and if a Turk is on her doorstep, it means one thing.

She slams the door on the woman, throws the latch across and bolts for the back door.

‘I just wanted to chat!’ comes the woman’s shout through the door, but Shera’s gone, out of the door and across the yard, and for all the good it’s going to do her, she might as well have just tried an old-fashioned bodyslam to get the woman out of her way and go past that way.

She jumps the fence, doesn’t even think about getting into the _Bronco_ , which they got back in their hands only a few days ago, Livas having been out looking for it for a solid week, and it had taken forever to drag it across the plains. No doubt the score lines of the wheels and the propellers are still there. Because, you know, it doesn’t _fly_ yet, so it’s not like she’d be able to get away in it regardless. But it’s on her list of things to do.

Instead, she bolts for Livas’ house, the other side of the rocket. She’d have to go past the woman to get to the Inn, and Livas would be able to hide her, pretend like she ran through and out the other side. The Turk wouldn’t buy it for a second, but the stall would be enough for her to make herself invisible in the pile of junk in his back room. She tumbles through the gate at the front of the property, and skids, tears the knees of her trousers and feels the blood prickling before she’s on her feet.

She doesn’t shout, doesn’t draw attention to herself, even though she can hear the woman yelling orders, and barrels into the front door. It doesn’t open underneath her hurried fingers, and she takes a breath.

‘Oh, blast!’ she hisses, because the door’s locked.

Why does he have to be out _now_? Of all times for him to choose to go out!

She glances over her shoulder; the woman looks at her, and she looks at the woman, and they both hesitate. Shera clenches her fist.

‘I just want to talk!’ the woman shouts again. ‘You aren’t in trouble! Though you’re making yourself look very guilty by running!’

‘Go away!’ Shera yells back, because she’s not the Captain, but the Captain trusts her with this town, with his home, his livelihood. She might not have the capacity to yell a string of curses as long as her arm, and the balls behind them to follow through with the hands at the end of those arms, but she can still shout back.

The woman spreads her hands, nose wrinkling and lip curling, because Shera is clearly deranged, and then she sighs, waves a hand.

Out of nowhere, troopers appear, helmeted and armed and with big downturns to their mouths. Shera, caught between a locked door and a narrow gate, has nowhere to run, and her elbows click when they grab hold of her.

‘Get off!’ she snaps, yanks at her arms, for all the good it does. Their grip is vice-tight, and she digs her heels in, but there’s more weight to them than her, and all she does is scuff her toecaps and knock a few pebbles on the path out of place, leaving scores in the dirt.

‘Now,’ the woman says, brushes her hair from her face, so very blonde and so very well kept. Shera would be jealous, if she had even the slightest concern for her appearance beyond the practicality of being clean and presentable.

‘Now,’ Shera replies, with a little sneer, because she’s obviously stupid as well as deranged. She yanks her arms again.

‘Let her be,’ the Turk says, and the troops do as bid, but their grip switches to their guns, and Shera doesn’t trust them not to jab her with the pointy end. It’s not _pointy_ , but if they jabbed her hard enough it would hurt. ‘She isn’t going to run, are you Ms. Crescent? Or is it Mrs Highwind now, my sources aren’t entirely certain.’

Shera feels the burning in her ears, but keeps her eyebrows drawn, her lip curled.

‘Crescent,’ she replies.

‘My name is Elena,’ the Turk says, with wide eyes and white teeth, ‘might I call you Shera? Just to even the field a little.’

‘Whatever you want,’ Shera replies, and looks past Elena, towards the Inn. A flash inside the window tells her that there are troops in there too. ‘What do you want? They aren’t here.’

‘Oh,’ Elena smiles, ‘we know. We aren’t after them at the moment. I mean, we will be, and we wouldn’t turn down an opportunity if they _were_ here. But they aren’t our priority at the moment. The President is dealing with them, and that’s enough.’

‘Dealing,’ Shera scoffs, and she doesn’t know where this bravery to dismiss a _Turk_ has come from, but she’s letting it take over, because the alternative is throw up on that very nice clean blue suit, and she doesn’t think it’d go down well.

‘Yes,’ Elena says, a flicker of disapproval in her eyes. ‘Dealing. That is what the President does, you see. He has to deal with other people’s mistakes, and correct them.’

‘Because Sephiroth is a mistake,’ Shera says, ‘and from what I hear, he isn’t their fault, but _ShinRa’s_. So who’s mess is he _dealing_ with, Elena?’

The first crack to the smile comes between heartbeats. A short, sharp snarl, curled lip and dark eyes, and then it’s gone again. The Captain had always said you couldn’t trust a Turk, and she wonders if they can trust themselves.

‘What the President is doing isn’t your concern. We require the rocket.’

‘You do, do you? On who’s orders? Rufus’? I don’t know if Palmer’s out of hospital yet to authorise access.’

Elena’s smile turns cold, and her eyes flicker to the troops, who straighten either side of Shera. Shera herself stiffens, because she must.

‘You have a very loud mouth,’ Elena says, ‘which is at such bizarre odds with your file! I thought you were a mouse, if I’m honest. Quiet and meek and very much yes sir, no sir to your _darling_ Captain.’

Shera doesn’t reply. She watches the shadows move inside the Inn. More troops come down from the path into the town, marching along like they own the place. She sees another blue suit, and recognises the man inside it.

Elena follows her gaze.

‘Ah, Rude’s made it, excellent. Now, you must understand, Shera, this isn’t out of spite. The President doesn’t care at all for the Space Program, he never did, but he doesn’t want to take your Captain’s dreams from him, oh no. We simply – because of him, Cid, I mean, and his friends, we now have this to deal with.’ She gestures above them, at Meteor, shining bright like a second sun. ‘And we have reason to believe that using the rocket will assist us in destroying it.’

‘You’re going to destroy Meteor with a rocket,’ Shera repeats, because she’s not sure she’s the deranged one anymore. ‘It’s a lump of metal.’

‘Yes, but it’s what we’re going to put _in_ the rocket that will make the difference.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Elena’s smile returns full force, all her teeth on show, and she turns away, looking to where Rude is approaching.

‘You will,’ she says over her shoulder, and steps away, waving her hand.

The troops grab Shera’s arms again, and drag her back to the house. Shera thinks, for a moment, of fighting, and then lets herself be dragged. There’s no use in it; yelling in the Inn tells her that John wouldn’t be able to get to her to rescue her if she started some trouble, and Livas isn’t here to do the same either. Sure, there are guns in the house, but she’s never touched them, let alone fired them, and the Captain had always been reticent about teaching her. Not because he doesn’t think she could, but because he wasn’t partial to them himself. She isn’t entirely sure why they have them, and why there are so many in the house, all things considered, but they’re there, and that’s all there is to it.

The door slams behind her, and the back door has been locked from the outside when she tries it.

‘I’ll need to bring the washing in!’ she yells through the door, and a squeaky voice replies that they’ll bring it in when it’s dry, don’t worry, ma’am.

‘Ma’am,’ Shera snorts, staring at the wood. She’s only called ma’am by the interns and students, and the fact that they’ve brought in the rookie troops, the youngest of the bunch, there’s no way that they expect a fight.

That’s probably why John hasn’t thrown them through the window. They’re kids, and that’s not fair.

She takes a seat at the table, and stares at the wall. First thing’s first; she needs to work out what they’re putting on the rocket, and then she needs to work out how to stop them.

* * *

Shera wakes the next morning feeling – well, she’s no less cross than she was yesterday, but she’s accepted that this is what she’s got to deal with now. Livas had come home to an occupied town, and had been dogpiled for his outrage at the sight of uniforms outside his home. Shera had tried to leave the house at the hooting and hollering, only to get roughly shoved back inside, and when she picked up the phone, fully intending to call Reine and complain, she’d heard a buzz in the earpiece that she hadn’t heard before. She’s no reason to suspect it, but she fully suspects that ShinRa – more specifically, the Turks – have interfered, that the phonelines are now bugged. Their calls are being monitored, if they weren’t before.

She daren’t call the Captain; he’d only be cross, most likely with her for not kicking up a stink, but ultimately, he would be livid with ShinRa for their audacity, that she is _sure_ of. He’s got enough on his plate right now, what with having to rescue Barret and Tifa, and try to keep the gang together, and he doesn’t have time to come back here and have _words_ with Elena about all of this nonsense. And so she keeps her mouth shut, and looks over the blueprints for the _Bronco,_ because she’s got nothing else to do. Assuming they all survive this, it’d be nice for the Captain to come home to a repaired plane, she thinks, and it’s not like she can do much else, besides cause trouble. Which, if she’s entirely honest, she’s not entirely sure how to do. Trouble seemed to have no problems finding her, so the Captain always says.

The next time she sticks her head out of the door, she asks the boy stood there if she’s allowed to be in the garden.

‘Uh,’ he says, and fiddles with his chinstrap, unsure how to reply. ‘I – I think you probably can. But I – I don’t think they’d like it if you did.’

‘Why is that?’

The boy shrugs, scuffs his feet. The uniform looks too big on him. ‘They think you might try and escape.’

Shera snorts, and says, ‘why is my escaping such a terrifying thing? Why are they scared that I – or anyone in Rocket Town, for that matter – might get away from them?’

The boy’s nose wrinkles beneath his helmet, and he doesn’t reply. He glances across the way, and sees one of the bigger, older soldiers standing there, clearly glowering, even with the helmet over his eyes.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ the boy says, straightening up and holding his gun firmly. ‘You must go back inside.’

‘We’re going to run out of food,’ Shera says, ‘we’re getting close to grocery day, and we do groceries for the whole town. You’d best let the management of the occupation know, unless they want a riot.’

‘Why would anyone riot?’ the boy asks, but Shera just shuts the door and returns to her blueprints.

* * *

Shera wakes in the night to screaming, several voices all at once, a cacophony of noise. She leaps out of bed and rushes to the front door, yanks it open to find the boy on guard – a different boy, but still a boy – clutching his gun and frozen, not sure what to do. Livas, because Livas is a fucking idiot, has tried to do something, anything at all, which is all it takes, and he’s been dogpiled by more troops than he needs. Elena comes rushing out of the Inn, half-dressed and her hair a rat’s nest, yelling orders that aren’t being listened to.

Shera, in her oversized t-shirt – the Captain’s, but she will have it washed and back in his drawer before he sets foot back in Rocket Town – and very little else, barefoot and hair loose, no glasses, no common sense, barges past the trooper at her door and towards the fray in the square.

‘Miss!’ the boy yells, but Shera yanks her arm free of his loose grip, and steps on a stone that makes her hiss and hop two steps before carrying on.

‘Get off him!’ she hollers, as though she has any strength in her voice to sound authoritative.

The Captain will go _ballistic_ when he hears about this, she knows it, and she can see the blood under Livas’ hands from here, shining in the moonlight.

Several things happen at once; someone fires their gun, Elena yells more ignored orders, Shera reaches the fight, the boy tries to grab her arm again, Livas yells at her to get out of it, and someone throws a punch.

The shot misses, more of a warning shot than anything intended to harm, Elena catches up to them, the boy gets his grip firm and yanks Shera back, Livas manages to get his head up enough to look at Shera just as he gets kicked in the ribs, and Shera takes the punch to her eye socket.

She yelps, and loses her footing as the hand on her arm continues to tug, meaning she goes tumbling backwards and crashes to the floor, taking the soldier with her. Elena doesn’t scream, because Elena isn’t the type of girl to scream, but the noise she makes is almost indicative of fear. John and Reine appear out of nowhere, and Reine is immediately next to Shera, getting her back upright, her hands warm and familiar against her face. Shera’s ears are ringing, her eyeballs buzzing.

‘Fuck sake!’ Reine snaps, loud in the sudden, terrifying silence.

Livas is groaning on the floor, clutching his ribs, and for a second it’s the only noise. And then Elena says, ‘who threw that punch?’

John shoves her out of the way, and Livas, with broken ribs and nose and ringing ears of his own, gets shakily to his feet.

‘Who was it?’ Elena barks, and she’s not very threatening.

‘I want a name,’ John snarls, and he _is_.

One of the soldiers very quietly raises a hand. Reine moves, very deliberately, across Shera’s line of sight, and turns her head this way and that, looking at her in the moonlight.

‘For fuck sake,’ Reine says again, very loudly, and turns her head to where Elena is a blonde and pyjama blur. ‘I need to take her to the Inn, she needs first aid.’

Elena hesitates, and then swallows, nods.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘yes. I’ll – I’ll come with you. I have a – a Cure materia.’

‘No,’ Shera grunts, as Reine helps her to her feet and the world spins one way then the other. ‘No, we don’t do – we don’t use that here.’

Elena makes a noise of confusion, and then huffs out a breath.

‘Your eye,’ she says, and Reine’s hands are warm on Shera’s back and arm as they walk towards the Inn.

‘No shoes,’ Reine murmurs. ‘You’re such a terror. What will the Captain say?’

‘He’ll call me names,’ Shera breathes back, and clutches at her face, can feel the swelling in her eyebrow, a real egg beneath her skin.

Behind them, John is saying some very unfriendly things, which is entirely unlike John. But Livas is saying nastier things, which is like him. So it balances out.

‘You should never have brought your men here,’ Reine says to Elena, who looks very unsure of herself all of a sudden.

She looks very small in her ShinRa-issue pyjamas, and her hair a mess, with no powder on her cheekbones. She looks – young. Vulnerable. Shera, peering at her from behind the watery blur of the swelling and dizziness, thinks that she probably wasn’t expecting to have to deal with this. This being them, Rocket Town as a whole.

‘We’ve had guards on the gates ever since the Captain first took off,’ Reine says, and guides Shera into one of the cosy armchairs in the bar area. ‘You didn’t need to trap us all in our houses. We aren’t like that.’

Elena pulls her shoulders back. ‘Those were my orders,’ she says, and Reine snorts.

‘Orders,’ she echoes, and shakes her head. ‘Get me some ice from the chest freezer, please, in a towel from the drawer.’

Elena, in what Shera reckons is not her type, does as asked, disappearing into the back. Reine turns back to Shera once she’s gone.

‘You’re an _idiot_ ,’ she whispers, holding Shera’s face. ‘What did you think was going to happen? You’re lucky it’s not _broken_.’

It feels broken, sore down into her jawline now, but she just blinks slowly, and rests the sore points in Reine’s fingertips, warm and soft.

‘It’s fine.’

‘The Captain’s going to go mad when he hears about this.’

‘We aren’t telling him,’ Shera says.

‘What?’

Quietly, so quietly she thinks she’s not said it aloud, she says, ‘I think they’ve bugged my phone.’

Reine swallows, and then exhales hard through her nose.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘okay. Fuck.’ She sighs. ‘We’ll get you patched up as best we can, and then I’ll walk you home, and you are _not_ to leave the house again, you hear me?’

‘I’m rebuilding the _Bronco_ ,’ Shera says, a mild protest that means nothing.

‘Then get one of the boys to do the heavy lifting for you,’ Reine says. ‘There’s a few Kalm kids in the lot, I’ve been talking to them, when they come in for dinner.’

Shera nods. She had no doubt that Reine would work her magic on them. She’s the mother a lot of kids have never had, and the mother a lot of them miss like they’d miss breathing.

She misses _her_ mother, and the want to go home hits her harder than the punch. It takes the wind out of her, and she gasps, feels the tears coming.

‘Hey,’ Reine says, softly, fingertips on the salt on her cheeks. ‘Hey, now, you’re alright. It hurts, I know.’

Now that the tears have started, Shera can’t seem to stop them, and she sobs, bitterly and brokenly, wretched heaves of her heart in her throat, and Reine pulls her in, rubs her back and her hair and shushes her with all the softness of the first night with a newborn.

‘Here,’ Elena says, from somewhere over Reine’s shoulder, and even though she’s still sobbing, Shera puts the ice on her face, holds it there and hiccups.

‘Listen,’ Elena says, her lips pursing and her fingers combing through her hair, trying to straighten it a little. ‘I – I can’t call the soldiers off. The order came from higher than me. I’m just here to – to – I’ve got a job to do.’

Shera holds the ice to her face and decides that right now she doesn’t care. She wants to go back to sleep. She wants a hug. She wants the Captain to see the swelling and the bruise and she wants him to – to –

Well. John’s handled it, so it doesn’t really matter.

‘Is your job really that worth is?’ Reine snorts, but she’s talking to a Turk, so she’s not going to get an answer, not a sensible one, anyway.

‘I will have him reprimanded,’ Elena says, ‘everyone involved in that fight will be reprimanded. They have orders not to use violence.’

Shera looks at Reine, and Reine looks at the wall, and she knows that it won’t make a difference. ShinRa are good for nothing but violence.

Reine lets her have the ice until it melts, and then looks her over again and sends her home. Though swollen, and likely to give her a really enviable black eye, she’s not broken the socket, so she’ll be alright. Take some painkillers and sleep it off, and she’ll be fine. Elena does not let Reine walk her back to the house, and the night air is cold against her bare legs.

Shera walks past the soldier at the door – not the boy that had been there before, but an entirely new man, someone big and broad with a beard on his chin and a scowl on his mouth – and shuts herself inside.

Then, very quietly, she climbs the stairs and passes the door to her bedroom, climbing instead into the Captain’s bed. It smells of cigarettes and sweat and soap, stale now that it hasn’t been occupied for weeks, bar that one night he’d come back, covered in mud and scrapes. She doesn’t care, though, doesn’t mind, buries her face in the pillow and breathes the smell of it in.

* * *

The next day, all of the troops that had been involved in the fight are gone, she can see that from the window. The blood splatters are still on the dirt of the square. She wonders how they managed it, but then she looks at the clock and sees how late she’d slept in. It’s practically midday, and for ShinRa, that’s near enough two working days, the way they get through things.

She washes, dresses, and studies her face in the mirror. Already her eye is going purple, green underneath where the bruising isn’t so bad, but purple and black, an entire galaxy on her eyelid, and still swollen. It’s messy and she doesn’t want to put her glasses on, but she can barely see without them in peak health, never mind with reduced vision.

At the door, the soldier there is unfriendly, but winces at the sight of her eye.

‘He was out of order,’ the soldier says, ‘there’s no reason to hit a woman like that.’

‘It was an accident,’ Shera says, good-natured about it, because it was an accident. ‘What happened to the troops that were in the fight?’

‘They’ve been exchanged,’ the soldier replies. ‘Go back inside, Mrs Highwind, before you hurt yourself some more.’

She curls her lip, but has no reason not to obey, so she closes the door.

* * *

And so nearly a week passes like this. Troops changing out, marches in the square, and no way for them to communicate amongst themselves. Trapped inside, with their phone lines tampered with, and Elena making out like she’s the mayor. She’s still very unsure of herself, but this is what it is, Shera realises. This is what they have. Until ShinRa have what they want for the rocket, there’s no way to get them gone. Livas is black and blue, and Shera’s eye stings to the touch, but that’s what it is.

There are a few big arguments in the middle of the street, which Shera, Reine and Livas’ wife, who has, until now, been sensible enough to keep her head _down_ , all get involved in. It’s mostly about food, because Rocket Town, as a whole, do things en masse as a community. They do groceries as a community, they do laundry as a community, they do everything they can in one go to save time and effort. But with ShinRa showing up, and making themselves at home, it means they run out of groceries before they’re due to go to the shops again, and the laundry needs doing more regularly with the shifts of troops meaning the inn is full all day, and it starts to fray tempers before it’s even become a situation worth worrying about.

‘Just let us go do the food shopping!’ Reine yells, ‘for fuck sake, you want to starve?’

‘We can do the shopping,’ Elena insists, and Reine laughs, angrily enough that Shera and Ana raise their eyebrows.

‘Good luck feeding the five thousand!’ Reine snaps, ‘we’ve got allergies out the asshole here, thanks to Midgar’s _piss poor_ diets!’

‘Midgar’s diets are fine!’ Elena insists, and Ana laughs so hard it makes _Shera’s_ eye ache.

And so it goes on like this, with Reine yelling, and Ana yelling, and Shera trying desperately not to yell to keep the peace over the top of them.

On the shift cycle where she has the young soldiers at her door, Shera does her best to plant the seeds of doubt, and she sees it in the shuffle of their feet, when they start to consider what she’s saying. One of them admits, quietly, that he’d been talking to some of the other boys, the ones from Kalm, that Reine had got her hooks into. He says that they’ve started listening to the pirate station that most of Rocket Town listen to, the one that gives you the _real_ facts and figures of the battles and deaths and troubles in the world, that talks about Sephiroth as the danger he is, not as the glory that ShinRa had made him out to be.

The next day, he’s gone, and Shera hopes he’s back in Midgar, on some mindless detail, looking after old ladies or ferrying schoolchildren. She knows it’s a foolish hope, but you have to have them in these times.

Every day, Meteor gets redder and redder, and nobody seems to know when the _things_ they’re putting in the rocket are going to come.

* * *

The first _thing_ arrives the same day that Shera hears on the radio that there’s been a runaway train in Corel. She knows, in her belly, that the Captain had something to do with it, because of course he did. Corel is Barret’s home, she knows this, and she knows that if they’d caught wind of ShinRa getting up to no good, they’d be right there dealing with it.

She hovers at the doorway, trying to see what it is that the troops are bringing in. Scarlet is there, and Shera feels something coil in her gut. Scarlet is bad news. Scarlet has always been bad news, and Shera doesn’t know what to do. She wants to call the Captain, tell him about this. But she gets as far as picking up the phone, and hearing the buzz, puts it down again. The troops that they’d managed to make some headway with, managed to get some kind of sense out of them, some kind of recognition of what ShinRa is, and what it’s _doing_ – they’re gone. They’ve disappeared overnight, replaced with brutes, twice the size of the kids, and twice as mean. They’re not afraid to shove Shera back into the house, and they refuse to help her with the _Bronco_. Refuse to let her outside to work on it herself.

So she watches Scarlet mouthing off, all thigh-high slit and inappropriate shoes, her hair so beautifully piled atop her head it makes her look like a viper lying in wait. She watches her, and she tries to make out what she’s saying. But she can’t hear anything, and so has no idea what they’re loading up. She sees Scarlet raise four fingers, and assumes that’s how many things they need.

Though they aren’t fighting in the street, she hears plenty on the radio about the things kicking up elsewhere. Junon is up in arms about the execution; for a start, it had failed. The Captain had got to Tifa and Barret in time, and they’d rescued them, and nobody actually wanted to see people executed, but they were up in arms about it all the same. It would have been the talk of the town, had Shera been able to get outside to talk to any of them. Instead, all she had were the four walls around her, and a harried voice explaining that AVALANCHE were doing what they could to stop Meteor, and if they brought down ShinRa in the process, all the better.

Though, from what the radio was saying, ShinRa were bringing themselves down, imploding from the inside. Scarlet had been slapped silly by Tifa, and Shera thinks about that when she sees her, thinks about how damaging to her dignity and her reputation it must have been.

And she thinks, _good_.

* * *

She asks the trooper at the door where the kids had gone.

‘Those old farts at Fort Condor,’ he says with a shrug, ‘they’re kicking up a stink again about the Fort, and protecting that fucking bird. They’re talking about something in the reactor, the higher ups. Guess we’ll see who’s stronger, ShinRa or some farmers.’

Shera’s belly turns over. Barret had spoken briefly about the Fort, and the battle they’d been having with ShinRa, when they’d visited. He’d said that they’d stumbled upon it early in their journey to chase down Sephiroth, and that they hadn’t had the funds or munitions to help, but he’d said he’d like to help them, even if only to do some damage to ShinRa.

She lies in bed and she thinks about that, about the kids going to the fort and hoping against hope that AVALANCHE don’t go there as well.

* * *

The Captain calls a day after Scarlet drops the first _thing_ off, and he tells her that it’s Huge Materia, and Shera supposes that makes sense. He tells her to go home, see her mum and dad, and she wants to, _Planet_ , she wants to. But she _can’t_.

Not least because of ShinRa barricading her in her house. She wants to tell him that, but she can’t bring herself to. She can’t say anything to him.

He almost tells her that he loves her, she’s sure of it. He almost manages to choke it out. Because he gets the first half of the word out, and then corrects himself, and she smiles about it to herself for several hours. 

The radio had announced a skirmish at Fort Condor, earlier in the afternoon, but it had had no details. Shera listens to the radio again later in the evening, and the casualty numbers are listed. There were survivors, and the radio makes it clear that it was obvious AVALANCHE had tried to spare as many as possible, incapacitating whoever they could. But it had been a battle, and there were casualties. The Condor had gotten away freely, and was safe, by all accounts, and therefore the Fort was meaningless now, without purpose. The Condor was gone, and so was all reason to stay.

Shera stares at the wall for a moment, on listening to the casualty number, and she thinks back to the jittery way the Captain had wanted her to go home. She thinks about the way he’d almost told her he loved her.

She thinks about how she should have choked it out, what was happening here, how she felt, so many things. She should have told him.

* * *

A day passes in a bit of a haze, Shera unsure, really, what any of it really means any more, and then Rude comes back to town, looking cross, and he lets himself into the house without so much as a by-your-leave.

‘Get out,’ Shera says, more on instinct than any real common sense.

‘I want the access codes to the rocket,’ he says, and Shera tells him to take it up with Palmer.

‘Palmer’s codes don’t work,’ he says, ‘you’ve changed them. We need them.’

‘Why?’ Shera asks, ‘because you lost two Huge Materia already? You’re desperate to be right, aren’t you? To be the ones to stop Meteor? You haven’t got a chance! AVALANCHE _will_ stop you.’

‘And the Planet will burn,’ Rude replies, ‘and you know this, Ms. Crescent. You know that launching the rocket is the only chance we really have.’

‘No,’ she replies. ‘It’s not. It’s really not. Get out of my house.’

Rude frowns at her from behind his sunglasses, and leaves.

She knows, in her gut, that it’s not going to be the end of it, so she draws a breath, and goes to the phone, dials the Captain’s number. It rings once, twice, three times.

‘They’re trying to launch the rocket,’ she says, and the Captain growls on the other end of the line.

‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know. We’re on our way. Try and stall them.’

‘They need the codes,’ she says, ‘Palmer doesn’t have them.’

‘Don’t give them up,’ he says, ‘we’re in Junon, we’re not going to be long. You only need to stall them for a couple of hours.’

She nods. ‘I’ll do my best.’

He hesitates for a moment. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘ShinRa are here,’ she says, ‘they’ve been here all week. They locked us down so we couldn’t get out. I’m sure they’re listening to this call.’

The Captain swears loudly and viciously, and Shera touches her eye, sore and blacker than it was earlier in the week. Getting worse before it gets better.

‘Okay, listen to me. I don’t know what the fuck they’ve done to be able to lock you down, but you get the fuck out on that street, and you start a fucking fight. I cannot _believe_ that the boys haven’t already.’

‘Livas tried,’ Shera says, ‘they – they beat the snot out of him.’

The Captain snorts. ‘It would be Livas. Either way, you gotta break them down. If you start it, the rest of them will pick it up, and you can stall their access.’

Shera purses her lips. ‘I can try.’

‘No,’ the Captain says, ‘you _will_. Just a couple hours, Shera, that’s all.’

She takes a shuddery breath, and the Captain’s echoes it.

‘Listen,’ he says, softly, and then the line abruptly cuts.

‘Hello?’ she asks, and pulls the receive away to look at it. But there’s only silence, not even the buzz of a line.

She turns, and looks at the open door. Rude is stood there, a pair of pliers in his hand.

‘I want the codes,’ he repeats, and Shera draws a breath.

Stall them. Right.

She can do that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think I mentioned it, but Emmy Rossum for Shera, and EDIT: i lied, it's Max Irons.


	10. Launch Codes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang return to Rocket Town, and things are. Not ideal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Language as ever. Some emotion. A surprise visit from a special guest.
> 
> As always, some editing to the order of events, because Cid is getting away from me now. He's his own man. But I am enjoying this SOOOOO much, and I hope y'all do too!
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Cid leaves the cabin after an hour or two spent trying to sleep. It’s been fairly pointless; between the whole, Mideel thing, and resting his broken ribs from the punt that fucking WEAPON gave before it fled, and the rush of getting Cloud back and then Cait telling them about Junon, he’s just – he can’t sleep. Giving up, he wriggles into his trousers, doesn’t bother doing them up, doesn’t bother putting his boots on, doesn’t bother with his jacket, just grabs his cigarettes and his lighter and slides the door enough to get through the gap. It’s the same as always out here, artificial lighting and engine-warm metal. It’s cooler than usual beneath his toes as he pads to the stairs and hauls himself up them, but he doesn’t mind too much. It’s a little jolt to the system, but it’s enough to give him his wits back, and he doesn’t mind that, _can’t_ mind that. He needs his wits. He’s not slept in the better part of forty-eight hours, but all he’s got is this. The midnight sky and the hum of the propellers working their way up through the struts.

He minds more about getting air. He’s choked inside, the thought of what he did and didn’t do, what he should have said at the Fort, what he shouldn’t have corrected, it’s choking him.

And so he needs air.

It hits him like a brick wall when he opens the hatch, and his eyes sting for a second, two, until he’s blinked enough to adjust to it, and then he slips through and closes it behind him, shuts himself off from the others. Out here, it’s just him and the air, and he can deal with that. He can probably scream in peace and not be heard.

At least, that’s what he’d thought, but when he rounds the corner to get onto the deck, he finds Tifa stood at the railing, elbows on the bar and chin on her hands, one ankle crossed behind the other. She’s statuesque, in a way he’d never really thought about. The man he’d been a decade ago, high on his status as a poster boy, he’d have not hesitated for a second in giving her a one-liner or two, all smooth come-ons and offers of cigarettes and drinks and his military wage for the night. He’s not ashamed of his past, because who he was at twenty was a very different man to who he is now at thirty-two. He’s still an absolute arsehole, and he knows it, but at least he’s not a scumbag about it. But that was then, and this is now, and all he can really think is that’s she’s _so fucking young_. She’s only just twenty, the way that you say your daughter’s only just finished school, and he won’t insult himself, or her, by saying that he feels protective, paternal. He’s not that old, not yet. But he’s definitely ready to swing for anyone who looks at her funny, never mind that she’s faster than him on any given day, and just as liable to swing.

Then again, he heard about the kind of shit she used to get up to with Aerith, in those initial days where their only concern was the nonsense ShinRa were doing. Chairs, he’d heard, had been involved at one point, and he misses Aerith. He’ll admit it when he’s ready to go to his grave, but he misses her.

‘Hey,’ he says, to shake the emptiness off his shoulders, and comes to stand next to her. ‘Can’t sleep?’

Tifa shakes her head, and gets a handful of hair in her face for her trouble. She sweeps it aside, a long brush of her fingers, and she wrinkles her lips before turning her gaze to her shoes.

‘No. There’s – too much to think about.’

‘It’ll be alright,’ he says, and cups a hand around his lighter, flicking it into some small measure of life, ‘whatever you’re thinking about, it’ll be alright.’

She hums, and straightens, leaning on the heels of her hands instead of her elbows, and looks out over the horizon, reddened by Meteor, and dark with the shadow of the night. At the furthest Cid’s eyes can see, a black mass on the horizon floats aimlessly against the shadow of a cloud. Ultimate Weapon, he reckons, or so Red called it, when it had fled the fight and they were picking their way through the rubble of Mideel.

They’d been searching for Cloud, but Cid, with a clawing desperation he’d not felt in his life before, had been looking for the Doctor and his wife, hoping that they’d survived the destruction. They had, of course they had, because the Planet was not so cruel as to give Shera such sadness at the end of everything.

Deep down, Cid thinks that this is a fair thing to feel, the end of everything. He doesn’t see a way to stop it, Meteor. Sephiroth. Any of it. It’s an inevitable sort of fate, and he’s – he’s terrified of it.

He takes a drag of his cigarette, and exhales it hard into the breeze, watching it dissipate in a second, lost in the whisper of the wind as they soar through the night, towards Junon.

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Tifa murmurs, and he grunts.

‘Fuck you on about?’

‘Your feelings,’ she says, ‘for Shera. You have such a good hold on them, and I don’t – I don’t understand how you do it.’

He nearly inhales his cigarette, and manages to choke out something resembling a laugh.

‘Fuck sake, kid,’ he snorts, and wipes his face with a hand. ‘Warn a guy next time.’

Tifa huffs a breath through her nose; it could be a laugh.

‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘but my point stands.’

‘What the fuck makes you think I have a handle on it?’ he asks her, because he – he – he doesn’t see the point in denying it.

She shrugs.

‘You look like you’ve got it under control,’ she says, ‘you don’t – it feels like it – like it’s – it’s _there_ – and I can’t get away from it. It’s just. Stuck. At the front of my brain, where I can’t turn it off, or turn away from it.’

He wrinkles his nose, looks at her, with her eyes so sad and her lip between her teeth. She’s so fucking _young_.

‘Fuck you on about?’ he asks again, because he feels lost. ‘You saying you’re in love with Shera? The fuck you wanna go and do that for? She certainly ain’t worth losing sleep over.’

Says he, like he’s not here because of precisely that.

At this, she laughs, a really big belly laugh that borders on hysteria. He lets her laugh it out. If he thought she’d take it, he’d offer her the cigarette. Instead, he waits until she’s done and is wiping tears out of her eyes.

‘No,’ she says, ‘not Shera. Even if I was – she’s – well, she’s yours. And I’m not a homewrecker.’

‘Ain’t nobody able to wreck my home quite like Shera does when she cleans,’ Cid replies, like he’s a sage dispensing wisdom. ‘Then – who are you – oh.’

He feels stupid for having even started to ask the question. There’s only one person that it could possibly be, and he knows exactly who it is.

‘Listen,’ he says, and knows what a jackass he is, but he’s going to do it anyway, ‘I know I’m fantastic and I got a great arse, but I’m too old for you, kiddo. My poor life choices are going to get me before we have a chance to start anything.’

At this, Tifa tears up a little, behind the smile she gives him, because she’s overtired, and she’s been working herself to the bone, and Cid lifts an arm obligingly, not protesting when she tucks herself under it, her face in her hands, pressed up against his collar.

‘How do you do it?’ she asks, sobs.

He stubs the cigarette out on the railing and flicks it into the nothingness of the black sky beneath them, rests his hand on the back of her head.

‘I don’t,’ he admits, soft into her hair. ‘I really fuckin’ don’t. I don’t know where you got this idea that I’m handling shit, Tifa, I really fucking don’t. ‘Cause I ain’t handling shit. Listen, I – I – I ain’t gonna deny. I love her. I love her so fucking much and I ain’t said shit about it to her. I ain’t breathed hide nor hair of a word about it, and she don’t know, and we might fucking die, and she ain’t gonna know. I’ve been – I’ve denied it. I spent most of my time knowing her denying it. She’s – fuck sake, she’s it for me, yanno? And I – haven’t told her.’

Tifa lifts her head, looks at him.

‘What do you mean, you haven’t told her? I thought she knew. Cloud said – He said.’

She can’t finish it, but Cid shrugs, and Tifa pulls herself away, close enough to still be touching at the elbow, but enough of a distance that he doesn’t have to feel like he’s holding her any more.

‘He says a lot of shit,’ he says, ‘and he assumed we were married when we first met, ‘cause that’s just the way it looks. A man and a woman living in a house? Course they’re married, can’t just be living in the same house, ‘cause she’s a pain in his arse and cost him everything.’

Tifa’s eyebrows crease, and then she opens her mouth, closes it again.

‘I suppose so,’ she says, because she was living by herself with a revolving door of men coming in and out of her door. Okay, they were AVALANCHE, but even so.

‘And – listen, don’t get me wrong. I _want_ to marry her. Fuck sake, I’d have married her by now if I thought for a second I could do it. I’d have done it the day we fucking met. But I – I couldn’t. And now, ‘cause of the – the rocket, and all the other shit that’s gone on. I just – ‘

‘You haven’t told her,’ Tifa says again, frowning at her fingertips. ‘Cid, you need to tell her.’

‘And have you told Cloud?’ Cid cuts back.

At the shake of her head, because of course she hasn’t told him, he snorts, and leans on the railing, fiddles with his lighter, but doesn’t light another cigarette.

‘You should,’ he says, ‘kid’s gone on you. He’s too much of a coward to say anything, but we all seen the way he looks at you.’

Tifa flushes, and then shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘Then don’t tell me to,’ he replies. ‘I’ll tell Shera that I want to spend the rest of my life with her and would rather die than be away from her like this again, when you tell Cloud you want to jump his bones.’

‘I do _not_!’ Tifa protests, but her cheeks are pink, and Cid snorts.

‘Whatever you say, kiddo.’

Tifa purses her lips again, and picks at her fingernails.

‘Cid,’ she starts, and then hesitates.

‘Yeah?’

‘How did you know you were in love with Shera?’ she asks, and he shrugs.

‘Didn’t,’ he says, ‘I mean. I knew. But I never really put a name to it. Just one of those things. She was always there, so I was always in love with her, but I never really bothered to do anything about it. And now – I don’t know. Too late, I guess.’

Tifa looks at him, all wide copper eyes and thick, fluttering lashes, and he shrugs.

‘It’s never too late,’ she says, ‘they always say, better late than never.’

‘You ain’t behaved the way I did,’ he tells her, ‘I’ve been – wretched.’

‘Then apologise,’ she says, like it’s that easy.

For another man, maybe.

But Cid is not another man, and he cannot just _apologise_. It’s going to take more than an _apology_ to undo the things he said and did.

‘You should try and rest,’ he says instead, because answering her will open more of a can of worms than he already has, and fighting the Zolom is not on his to-do list. ‘We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’

‘We never stop,’ she replies with a sad little quirk of her lips, which could be a smile, if he was inclined to believe it. She rubs her eye, and nods. ‘I suppose you’re right. Goodnight, Cid.’

And with that, he’s alone on the deck, staring at Ultimate Weapon, floating on the horizon like a particularly large bird catching a breeze.

He thinks about what she said, and what he said, and what he should have said and done, and he smokes half a pack. The dawn comes and they arrive at Junon, and then he has to put all of these thoughts aside, because he’s got a job to do, and there’s no rest for the wicked.

* * *

In a move he did not expect, Cloud is claustrophobic. Yuffie, he understands. Cloud, not so much. But the boy is shaking and his eyes are wild, like a trapped animal, and Cid almost feels for him. Yuffie’s already thrown up once, which is fair, and he doesn’t know why, when they realised that they were going to be going underground and _underwater_ , and in the confined space of a sub, he doesn’t know why she insisted on coming. Really, someone with some stable braincells would have been useful. But Tifa had been looking pensive and had gnawed a chunk out of her thumbnail, which mean that Barret had closed rank around her, and the others had just made sort of vague noises. And so it was up to Cid and Yuffie again, pottering along with Cloud to make sure he didn’t make a jackass out of himself. It’s almost funny.

‘Shift,’ he says, because Cloud’s looking too green to be any use now, ‘I’ll do it.’

He’s already made the commander of the sub scream through his teeth by kicking the main console, so what’s the harm in taking over piloting it? It can’t be that hard; he managed the train at Corel, and he’s yet to encounter a car he can’t drive, and he’s flown several aircraft, so it’s not like it should be hard.

And once he gets his brain around the inverted Y-axis, it’s easy enough. He does his best not to make Cloud or Yuffie sick, but it’s hard to think about them when he’s got a mission in mind.

The commander says that they have about ten minutes before the sub carrying the Huge Materia is out of their range, and Cid takes nearly three of those minutes doing his best to navigate the crooked terrain of the underwater crags and rocks. So then, they have minimal amount of fucking around to do, and maximum amount of getting the fuck on with it.

In some small way, in a way he hadn’t expected to be small and yet not entirely inconsequential, it’s like being back in the biplane, during the war. He’s got readouts instead of visual, but the radar’s not changed in ten years, and the tightness between his shoulders as he squeezes the side-sticks tight is familiar. It’s been a _long_ time since he last felt that kind of familiarity, that low thump of his brain behind his eyes, the pressure of doing it _right_ , of _succeeding_ , of _victory_. It’s been a long while.

There’s no trigger on the back of the side-stick in his right hand, but his finger twitches anyway. No, this time it’s a button beneath the side-stick, on the console itself, helpfully painted red. The commader’s eyes are boring into the back of his head.

‘I know you,’ he says, and Cid grunts.

‘Been on the news, ain’t I?’ he dismisses, and banks the sub around a jutting rock, gets a blip to announce that the target is back in range.

‘No, from before that. You – I saw you somewhere, during the war.’

‘Quite probably. My face was all over the media, and – I doubt you saw me on the ground. I never left my plane, if I could help it.’

He glances over his shoulder, looks at the commander, and tries to make some sense of the man, tries to place his face. But Cid has seen a lot of faces in his lifetime, and they were all wearing helmets, one way or another, and faces are less recognisable than voices. He doesn’t know the commander’s voice, but that’s not to say he’s never met the man before.

The commander spends a second considering this, and Cid returns to the readouts. Cloud is doing his best to help, but all he’s doing is distracting, so Cid tunes him out.

Cid pushes one of the sticks, speeds them up a little bit, and brings the blip of the other sub closer and closer, until the reticule flashes up to indicate that they’re now in range.

‘You were one of the first up,’ the commander says, and Cid heaves a breath.

‘Can we fucking _not_?’ he asks.

Yuffie throws up somewhere behind him. One of the soldiers, who’d been so desperate to do their finishing move on being imprisoned, cries out and tries to wriggle away. The commander sniffs. Cloud gags, but thankfully doesn’t throw up.

‘No, no,’ the commander says, and Cid can feel the creak of his knuckles around the side-sticks. ‘No, you were one of the first up there, and you were – you lot were _lethal_. More casualties from you lot than there were from the enemy.’

‘Shut the _fuck up_ ,’ Cid snaps, and slams his fist into the red button, because the reticule is demanding he fire, and the rattle of the submarine, and the ripple from the collision with the other sub shuts everyone up for a moment.

Then an automated voice says, ‘target destroyed,’ and that’s the end of that.

Cid finds the controls for the claws, and scoops the Huge Materia out of the rubble, and is about to pull them to the surface when a crackle comes over the radio.

‘ShinRa Two, do you copy?’

The three of them look at each other, and then look at the Commander.

‘You’d better answer,’ is all he says, because he’s apparently an absolute asshole.

Cloud is the closest to the radio, and so hits the button.

‘This is ShinRa Two,’ he says, ‘everything is normal.’

‘Good,’ comes the voice over the radio. ‘We’ve heard word that AVALANCHE have hijacked one of the subs, but we only lost contact with ShinRa One.’

‘Is that the one that got destroyed just?’ Cloud asks, because he’s bold as brass, apparently. ‘We didn’t see who fired.’

‘It was,’ comes the voice on the radio. ‘We need you to pick up the Huge Materia before AVALANCHE get it, and return to the Airport. We’re taking it to Rocket Town as soon as you get to the surface.’

‘Rocket Town?’ Cid chokes out, and Cloud turns to look at him, half stricken, half with the wide eyes of someone begging for you to shut your fucking mouth.

‘Yes, sir,’ Cloud says, ‘we’ll be as soon as we can.’

He hits the button to disable the radio, and then swears. Cid swears along with him. Yuffie groans.

‘They’re going to use the rocket to launch the Huge Materia,’ Cid says, ‘that’s the only possible reason they can be going there. They’re going to use my fucking rocket to blow up Meteor! Fucking idiots, there’s no way it’ll work.’

‘We have three of the Huge Materia,’ Cloud says, ‘they must know we have two of them by now, and they don’t know we have the third. They’re going to try and launch it with two.’

‘It won’t be enough,’ Cid sighs, and leans back in the seat. He rubs his eyes. ‘Fuck sake, _Shera_.’

Cloud chews his lip, and then shrugs.

‘We’d better get topside,’ he says, and rifles in his pockets for his PHS. Looking at it he says, ‘if we can get the _Highwind_ close enough, we should be able to avoid Junon entirely, right?’

Cid shrugs, and pulls one of the side-sticks back, and the sub begins to ascend. ‘Fuck knows. Worth a shot.’

He can’t think, his focus is totally shaken. All he can think about is that he hasn’t spoken to Shera for a _week_ , and he should have called her, and he should have told her that he loves her, and fucking _ShinRa_ are in the town, and it’s _his_ town, and he was meant to keep them safe, and for fuck sake!

They break the surface, and the commander helpfully opens the hatch to get some air in, and before he’s sat back down, because he’s very accommodating, as prisoners go, everyone’s PHS rings at once.

Cloud gets Tifa, who is trying to help direct the _Highwind_ to their location, but she’s been unable to get through on the PHS to know where they are, and that’s nice of her. Yuffie gets Cait Sith, who’d been trying Cid’s PHS for ten minutes to tell him that ShinRa are in Rocket Town and that they’re heading for the Rocket, and Cid gets this information from Yuffie ten seconds before he answers the phone to a fraught Shera, and he tries, he fucking _tries_ to tell her that he loves her. He tries his best, but the line goes dead, and he stares at his PHS for a second.

‘The fuck is that shit?’ he asks, but the PHS just beeps and the screen goes dark.

Right. Okay.

‘We need to move,’ Cloud says, because Cloud is helpful like that.

Cid nods, teeth gritted tight, and then he exhales hard, stretches his neck.

‘Get on top of the sub,’ he says, ‘it’ll be stable enough.’

He boosts Yuffie out first, and then Cloud, and hauls himself up behind them, ignores the three soldiers still inside, because they’ll be able to steer the sub back to the port. They’re in the middle of the fucking ocean, and there’s nothing they can do for now, nothing except watch the _Highwind_ come in close. Barret, a shadow against the sun, throws the rope ladder over the side for them. Cid holds it steady and makes sure Cloud and Yuffie are most of the way up before he swings himself onto it.

As soon as his feet hit the deck, he’s slamming through the door and down into the belly of the ship, jumping off the stairs and across the gangway to get to the cockpit. Tifa, halfway through the door when he crashes into the grille, startles.

‘You have to stop jumping like that,’ she says, ‘it’s bad enough when Cloud does it.’

‘I don’t have time,’ he replies, and does his best not to rudely shove past her, catches her shoulder in a hand to steady her.

‘Time?’ she echoes, but he’s already got a cigarette lit and filter chewed into before she’s turned to look at him.

‘Outta the way,’ he tells the pilot, a little ruder than he needs to, because he’s not thinking about politeness, not really.

He’s doing his best, but he’s got other concerns, namely Shera, and her safety, and the safety of everyone else in that fucking shithole town he calls home. ShinRa are there, and he – he – he can’t afford to lose the little family he’s managed to gather there.

‘Captain?’ the pilot asks, but Cid yanks on the yoke and turns the ship around on an axis that’s far tighter than she’s meant to turn on.

‘We’re going home,’ he hollers, ‘I need full power, and I need absolutely no fucking around. Either help, or fuck off, those are your choices.’

Vincent, stood in the pit with his arms folded, climbs the steps.

‘Cait told us that there was a ShinRa presence at Rocket Town,’ he says, and Cid snorts.

‘Presence,’ he chokes out, and nearly chokes on the smoke of his cigarette when he inhales instead of exhales. ‘Fucking overrun is what they’ve done. Locked my fucking town down, fucking assholes. I’ll fucking – I’ll – ‘

Tifa, out of nowhere, lays a hand on his arm. ‘It’s going to be alright,’ she assures him, because she doesn’t know what else to do, and the pithy comfort is just that.

But he accepts it, even if he’s not listening to it. He’s already in Rocket Town, and he’s – he’s –

‘They aren’t launching that fucking Rocket,’ he says.

‘Of course not,’ Tifa replies, and politely steps back to let him concentrate.

He hears them, vaguely, over his shoulder, talking about Rocket Town, and coming up with something resembling a strategy, but it’s all based on suppositions and possibilities of the events. They don’t _know_ what they’re going to find when they get there. Cid doesn’t _care_ about the town itself, not really. He cares about the people, about their safety. Oh, they’re rough enough to take on the base level of ShinRa, most of them _were_ base level ShinRa troops at one point, most of them served in some capacity in the army, for however long they were needed. But he thinks of Shera, of how she can’t lift a finger, of how, in those first days of him being gone, she’d been dragged around by her hair. He thinks about the fucking _damage_ these fuckers could do to someone like her, more than they already have, and he –

He’s _livid_.

His gloves creak around the leather of the yoke, and he shoves the lever a little harder, even though there’s no power left to give the ship.

‘I’m coming,’ he says, to himself, to her, to the emptiness of the sky. ‘Just a couple hours, hold on.’

* * *

It’s a wonder the fucking town isn’t on fire by the time Cid parks them up on the outskirts and they sprint to the gates. The _Highwind_ promises to stand by, and provide aid only when they’re called for. Cid thinks, most likely, they’ll be needed for medical assistance; if Shera’s managed to start a fight, he can count on Livas and John, and almost certainly Hawke and Grier, to have broken some bones.

Livas will be lucky he doesn’t break his neck, the way he carries on.

But yes. There’s screaming and hollering and even some hooting going on, and Cid skids to a halt in the square, about to grab the nearest person when he hears it.

‘Cid!’ Tifa yells, but he’s already moving, following the sound of Shera fucking _screaming_ past his house, past the shop, up along the path to the rocket.

Tifa slaps Cloud’s arm, and they follow him. The others, wisely, perhaps, remain in the town, and take on the task of assisting the townsfolk, because any excuse to kick the snot out of ShinRa is an excuse Yuffie is happy to take. But that’s all by-the-by, because Cid has not spent the last ten years building rockets and living with these assholes throwing spiders and water and snowballs to not know the sound of Shera screaming, and he’s – he’s – he’s blinkered, and he knows he’s blinkered, but that’s all he’s got. The sound of her _terrified_ and he’s got to do _something_.

He skids around the edge of the steps over the cable, nearly topples, but he can already feel the bubble of _something_ beneath his skin, and he pushes onwards. As he hops over the cables, one, two, three, and comes around to where the stairs to the rocket are, he catches up, and Shera’s doing her best to kick and scream and writhe, and he thinks _good girl_. She won’t break free, never mind any of their bones, but she’s giving it a good fucking go.

‘Rude!’ he roars, and the Turk turns back, an eyebrow raising behind his sunglasses.

‘Oh,’ Rude says, ‘it’s you.’

Shera turns in her skin, prompting one of the soldiers holding her arms to kick the back of her knee, but she barely seems to notice, focused more on getting herself around enough to look over her shoulder.

‘Captain!’ she shouts, and tries her best to yank herself free, and a crack nearly takes the wind out of him, but it’s only the seam of her sweater.

He’s close enough that he can see the black eye, purple and swollen and _very fucking deliberate_ , and the bubbling under his skin is suddenly so much fucking worse, his blood _boiling_. He itches with it, and wants to tear his skin off, but he can’t do that, so he’s stuck.

‘Who the fuck did that?’ he demands, but Shera shakes her head, yanks again, only to get another kick to her knee that takes her off her feet.

Cid lurches forward, but she’s back on her feet before he can do anything, and she kicks the trooper in the leg. It’s nothing, really, but at least she tries.

‘This is all very touching,’ Rude says, and Tifa skids to a stop one side of Cid, Cloud the other.

They have their weapons ready, and Cid knows the bend of Tifa’s knees well enough now to know she’s going to spring and boot one of those soldiers in the face.

‘Touching?’ Cid laughs, and it’s more of a bark than a laugh. ‘When I find out who lay hands on her, yeah, it fucking will be.’

Rude pushes his glasses up his nose, and his mouth does something that’s almost a smile.

‘You talk a very loud talk,’ Rude says, and comes back down the steps to pull his gloves tight on his fingers. ‘But I have yet to see something to really suggest you are more than that.’

Tifa’s gloves creak in turn, and Shera nearly breaks her arms trying to yank herself free.

‘More than that,’ Cid echoes, and Cloud breathes steadily next to him.

‘Rude,’ Cloud offers, because Cloud is, again, the de facto leader of the bunch of morons that they’re shaping up to be, ‘just be reasonable. Shera doesn’t have anything you need, just let her go.’

Rude shakes his head, and it might be a chuckle that escapes his mouth, it might not be, it’s gone too quickly to identify it properly.

‘I’m afraid not,’ he says. ‘She has the launch codes. She changed them, and so we need her.’

Cid snorts. ‘Are you fuckin’ stupid? You think I don’t know the launch codes to my fuckin’ rocket? If I got the codes, you don’t need her.’

‘Give me the codes.’

‘No.’

The word comes out of him so fast that he can’t stop it, and it does him no good, this level of anger and rage and upset. It does him no good at all, but the boiling in his blood, the ants under his skin, the ripple of snakeskin in the sunlight, he knows that feeling now, can recognise it for what it is.

Rude adjusts his glove again, pulls it tight against his fingers. The leather creaks. ‘Then I’ll get it out of her.’

‘You lay a fuckin’ hand on her, and I’ll –‘

‘You’ll what, _Captain_? We have the upper hand here, we have a hostage, and we’ll take the necessary steps to ensure your co-operation.’

‘What steps?’ Cloud asks, and his knuckles are very white around the hilt of his sword. ‘You’ll do what, Rude?’

Rude offers them a sympathetic look, even with his eyes covered with the sunglasses.

‘Cloud, don’t insult yourself,’ he says, and his head turns, just enough, to betray that he’s looking at Tifa. ‘Take the engineer aboard,’ he says then, ‘I’ll handle them.’

The soldiers nod, heels clicking, and start dragging Shera towards the stairs. She kicks and screams again, but her knees are clearly sore, and she’s not able to get a grip with her heels to get her feet under her, so there’s not much she can do. Her eyes lock with Cid’s, and he’s frozen for a second. Tifa isn’t, and launches herself at them, but Rude is there before she can close the distance, and he takes her first punch straight to the chest with little more than a grunt. Then he shoves her, not unkindly, and Cid had not really thought about the Turks in any great detail for any length of time to realise that Rude being able to put Tifa on her ass several feet away without trying was a thing that was not only possible but likely, but there she is, toppling over herself before finding her feet again.

‘Captain!’ Shera shouts, and she’s going to hurt herself if she tries to fight on the stairs, Planet knows she can do enough damage to herself under her own steam on those stairs. Cid’s nearly brained _himself_ on those stairs. He remembers the scrapes down the back of her thighs the last time she fell down them, how they’d taken a week to heal properly, and there’s still a faint shadow of them now, half a decade later, when she catches the sun just right.

The dragon comes out of nowhere. He’d thought it was a one-off incident, a fever dream brought about by no sleep and too much time alone as he picked his way through the woods to get back to the house after parachuting into the wilderness. She’d come out of nowhere then, too, a coiling, burning serpent, fire in his blood and he’s grateful, at least, that she doesn’t seem to be fire-based, because she’d have burnt down the forest the way she went after the enemies. She comes out of nowhere now, too, coiling around his shoulders and searching his soul for the split second she needs before she blind-sides Rude, taking him off his feet far further than he’d managed to shove Tifa.

‘The hell is that?’ Cloud demands, sword still half in the air from where he’d been about to throw himself into battle.

‘Fuck knows, dragon, ain’t it?’ Cid grunts and spins the spear, feels the bubble of heat in his muscles, taking the ache out, the way that it had the first time the dragon had appeared. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to give him a second wind. He should call his mother, really, ask her about this. With his father dead and buried, she’s the only one with any kind of knowledge of the bloodline left. But this is a thought for another time, when he’s not staring a fucking _dragon_ in the eyes.

She curls around him one last time, a familiar, blood-warm embrace, and then she’s gone as suddenly as she appeared.

Tifa reappears at his shoulder, wiping blood from her nose.

‘So that happened,’ she says, and Cid shrugs, pulls a cigarette from under his goggles, sticks it in his mouth, watched Rude struggle to his feet.

‘That’s generally the way things go, yeah,’ he says, and promptly gets smashed in the face by a Grand Spark that Rude throws back at him, because Rude is his own namesake.

He stays on his feet, just about, but skids back a few inches, feels the ache of the blow between his eyes.

‘I was talking, motherfucker!’ he hollers, and Rude shoves his glasses up. ‘Fucking rude!’

Rude spreads his hands, head cocking just enough to suggest an answer, as if to say, _well what did you expect,_ and Cloud scoffs.

‘Fuck this,’ he says, and off he goes, throwing himself into battle. Tifa snaps her braces and rolls her shoulders, follows his heels.

Cid wipes his own bloody nose, hesitates for half a second, and then twirls his spear, plants his feet.

‘Get after Shera!’ Tifa hollers, and smoothly ducks under a very overly-telegraphed swing of Rude’s fist. He really doesn’t like hitting her at all. ‘We’ve got this.’

‘We gotta stop the launch!’ Cloud yells, and barely blocks a Grand Spark three inches from his face, the ringing of his sword hitting the blow clearly ricocheting around his skull. ‘You know what to do!’

Barely, but Cid accepts that they know what they’re doing, and hauls his ass up the stairs. His blood’s cooled a little now, the dragon having done her duty, as far as she’s concerned, and that’s fine, he doesn’t think she’d be helpful inside the rocket anyway.

It’s stifling inside the rocket, and he yanks off his gloves and jacket. There ain’t room to swing a cat, either, so he has to leave his spear wedged in the framework, and he scrambles through the air lock to get into the control room. Shera’s not going to be in there, but he has to get an idea of what he’s dealing with first.

Inside, some of the trainees he’d had in here not six months ago are wringing their hands, looking at each other.

‘Captain!’ they exclaim as one when they see him, and Cid looks back at them.

They’re so fucking young, and his chest aches.

‘We’re going to launch the rocket!’ one of them says, ‘it’s going to save the Planet!’

‘Isn’t that cool?’ another one asks, eager as anything. ‘I think it’s really cool, to be part of all this!’

Cid feels the incredulity on his face, even around the cigarette, and the eagerness on their bright-eyed, baby faces makes him want to be sick.

He rubs his eyes, takes a breath.

‘Alright,’ he says, ‘how’s the rocket looking?’

The third student, the one fiddling with his fingers still and looking at the console, pipes up.

‘It’s looking fine,’ he says, ‘there’s just – we’d planned to run it on auto-pilot, so that nobody would get hurt.’

‘But?’

‘It’s not responding. Something is blocking the communication between the auto-pilot and the command station.’

‘And we’re fixing it?’ Cid asks, because he knows damn well who cause the issue in the first place.

The first trainee nods, but doesn’t meet Cid’s eyes. ‘Yes, Captain. Not, uh. Willingly.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They dragged, uh, they dragged Shera in here, sir. She was kicking and screaming, sir, but she’s down there.’

‘Fucking wizards!’ he snorts, and makes a very fucking quick decision, based on information he doesn’t have, but knows in his gut to be true. ‘She’s going to take a hundred fuckin’ years to fix it!’

And then, he knows, deep down, it’s going to be too late to get her off the rocket. And if it’s auto-piloted, if it’s being controlled from the command centre. He’s not going to be able to abort it this time. His only chance, really, is to take control of it before the auto-pilot kicks in.

‘Listen, I’ll take over, so you don’t have to worry about the auto-pilot.’

‘Sir,’ the second trainee says, because they’ve obviously had their orders, and they haven’t learnt the great art of _ignoring them_ yet.

‘I said I’ll take over! You get your fucking arses off this rocket now, that’s an _order_.’

The trainees look at each other, and then quietly scuttle out, and Cid hears them mutter apologies. The trainees have always been weird, though, so he ignores it, and goes to look at the consoles. Shera’s in the rocket, apparently, and he knows she deliberately broke the auto-pilot, because he’d told her to stall, and he doesn’t think that was quite what he meant, but it stalled the launch. They wanted the codes, which they don’t have, but if they don’t have the appropriate launching software…

Then again, he thinks, looking over the readings, then a-fucking-gain. This is ShinRa, they would absolutely waste a few lives making some innocent, ignorant kids pilot it. They were so excited about being a part of it, a part of this history that he knows is fucking nonsense.

The smell of blood and sweat fills the cockpit, and he turns at the sound of panting, fists clenched. It’s only Cloud and Tifa, looking battered and bruised, but intact.

‘Cid,’ Tifa says, ‘Rude got a call, they have the codes.’

Cid wrinkles his nose. ‘How? Shera’s – ‘

‘Rude said something about Palmer. They’re just waiting on a repair.’

‘The fuck does Palmer - the auto-pilot,’ Cid says, and looks at the readings again. There’s no sign that they’re really repaired, but he wonders if they were ever broken in the first place. All you had to do was move a wire and it would make it all look fucked. ‘If you want the Materia, you’d better get it quickly. Through that hatch, we built a housing for it. Figured that we might need the extra power. Never intended for Huge Materia, but I suppose they’ve pulling the couplings apart to get it in.’

Cloud purses his lips, and looks very concerned for a moment.

‘Look,’ Cid says, ‘this is – this is my dream, right? This is what I wanted for the entirety of my life. To go to space. Take the Huge Materia and get off the rocket.’

‘Cid,’ Tifa starts, and he knows how stupid he sounds.

But he’s saved from replying, because the rocket trembles.

‘What the fuck?’ he demands of the air around them, and the intercom crackles into life.

‘Hey-hey!’ Palmer crows, and Cid hates the sound of the fat fuck’s voice _so_ much. So very fucking much.

‘Palmer!’ he yells, ‘What the fuck have you done this time?’

Palmer laughs, in the way that you laugh when you’re being insulted but don’t realise it. ‘They’ve finished the repairs, so I’ve started the launch!’

Cid looks at the readings again, which haven’t changed at all. Shera’s still down there, and he still doesn’t know what she did to the auto-pilot.

‘Goddamnit, Shera!’ he snaps, and kicks the console, hitting as many buttons as he can, but nothing responds. ‘She lock the console this time or what? Fucking _can’t trust her_!’

He can, and he knows he can, and he told her to stall, and is this what she did? Has she gotten herself confused on which wires to twist and which to unplug?

She really wasn’t fucking satisfied with that failure to kill herself the first time, huh?

But this time he _can’t abort the launch_.

Palmer laughs. ‘No, no, Captain! You don’t have to thank your lovely wife for this! I mean, it’s very touching that you made the launch codes her birthday! But it’s not completely down to her!’

‘ _She’s not my wife_!’

Palmer just keeps laughing. ‘Ooh, look at that! It’s almost lift-off!’

That stops him. He looks at Tifa, looks at Cloud. Tifa goes to the door, but it slams shut and she can’t get it open, no matter how hard she spins and shoves at the handwheel.

‘Cid!’ she exclaims.

‘Fucking _hell_! Palmer, what are you doing? Not even a countdown? Motherfucker, you just wanna ruin my fucking day, eh?’

Palmer just fucking _laughs_ , and if they survive this, Cid’s going to fucking kill him. Clearly, the truck didn’t do the job, so fuck it. Want a job done properly, do it yourself.

‘Oh!’ Palmer exclaims, and Cid gestures at the other two to grab hold of something. ‘Blast off!’

The rocket shudders, Cid’s knees aching with the effort of keeping him upright, and the roaring is immense, even inside the cockpit, sealed as it is. Tifa loses her grip and hits the wall, can’t get away from it to get her grip back. Cloud’s only just staying upright. Cid has no idea how he manages it, but he watches the world fall away from them in the screen, gaze flickering between that and the monitors on the console.

The world falls, falls, falls.

And then, just like that, they’re in space.


	11. Touchdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team land, and Cid carves out a quiet moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a super quick update, but you will understand why.
> 
> Warning for canon injury that is just, never dealt with.
> 
> Enjoy my lovelies~!

For a minute or two, there’s silence in the cockpit, just an aching, empty silence. Cid’s not even sure they’re breathing. Then Tifa gasps, and clambers her way over to him, over the chairs and into the gap, her eyes wide.

‘We’re in space,’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ Cid replies, and he’s – not sure what he should feel, not really.

On the one hand, he’s _in space_. He’s home in a way he didn’t know he could feel like he belonged. There’s nothing but stars in front of him, an ocean of endless black silk, twinkling with thousands, _millions_ of lights. Fuck sake, it’s _beautiful._ He’s breathless, speechless. Absolutely taken away with it.

And all he can think is, _fuck sake, I hope Shera made it_. There’s nothing coming over the speakers, no crackle of a connection to a lower radio. The only way to know would be to go down there and check.

‘Let’s – alright, let’s look at the course.’

He needs to turn his brain on, needs to actually _think_ something more than nothing at all. He rubs his face with both hands, feels the chill of space on his bare arms, and takes a steadying breath. Then he presses a few buttons, and the stars disappear behind the display, and a blinking green line shows them loud and clear where they’re headed.

‘Yeah,’ Cloud sighs. ‘Straight to Meteor.’

‘Fuck you sounding so pathetic for? You’re young, you prick. Got your whole life ahead of you.’ Cid snorts, and hits a few more buttons, before grunting and giving the control panel an enthusiastic bang with the side of his fist. ‘Motherfucking piece of shit! Palmer’s gone out of his pig-stinking way to lock the Auto-Pilot. It should have an automatic revert back to manual, but _no._ Fucking bitch.’

‘So,’ Cloud starts, and wrinkles his nose. ‘So does that mean – that means we’re – we’re going to crash.’

Cid snorts and gestures, heads towards the far door, leading deeper into the rocket.

‘You kids are going to turn me grey,’ he says, ‘come on, we’ve got an escape pod in for situations like these. Some ShinRa stipulation, you know how these fucking things are. but you wanted the Huge Materia, right? Couldn't give a shit, mate, but it's this way.’

Cloud and Tifa exchange a look, and then nod, follow him through to an ante-chamber just off the cockpit, and Tifa’s breath is drawn out of her chest by the Huge Materia, glowing and shining so brightly that they almost don’t need the lighting strips to illuminate the room.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathes, and Cid shrugs.

‘It’s what it is,’ he says, ‘I think the code’s four-four-eight-seven. Better get crackin’ though, kid, we wanna be in that pod long before we need to eject.’

Cloud tries the code, which doesn’t work, and Cid frowns, taps his chin and his foot, as an automated lady’s voice informs them that unauthorised access has been detected and a three-minute shutdown has been initiated.

‘Fuck, I thought that was the code. Or is that the original launch code? Fuck, uh. It definitely has two numbers the same together, all ShinRa codes have that. Uh, try – I’m sure it’s four-four, uh. Shit, I dunno man, hit the numbers.’

Cloud tries several combinations, and Cid keeps wracking his brains. These codes were never his strong suit, it was small stuff he didn’t sweat, he let Shera and Livas and people who had heads for that kind of shit deal with it. Shera put all the codes down on a piece of paper for him, but he has no idea where that is, or if the codes are even relevant anymore.

They have about twenty seconds left when he says, ‘four-four-five-eight,’ and it works.

The coupling separates and the housing opens, and Cid helps Cloud lever the Materia out. It’s not as big as the other Materia, and Cloud manages to lift it by himself.

‘My great advice saved the day,’ Cid announces, because he knows damn well that that’s not what happened, and Cloud just snorts and rolls his eyes.

‘Sure thing, Cid,’ he says, and Tifa touches the Materia with tentative, awed fingertips.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ she says, ‘we’d better hurry to the escape pod, we spent a lot of time here.’

So off they go, following Cid down a ladder – and fucking save him if he wasn’t ready for Cloud to throw the fucking Huge Materia down the hatch to him – and there’s an odd buzz, a rumble of electricity.

‘Weird,’ Cid says, eyes narrowing for a second as he listens. ‘You hear that? I ain’t heard that before.’

‘What is it?’ Tifa asks, and Cid juts a lip, shakes his head.

‘Fuck knows. Might just be the rocket, never been in it going before.’

It is very much not the rocket itself, but Oxygen Tank Eight.

The explosion takes him by surprise, and he’s bastard lucky it didn’t kill him. His ears are ringing, eyes buzzing, and it takes him a second to realise that he’s not entirely unscathed.

‘Mother _fucker_!’ he roars, because fuck him, it hurts!

‘Cloud!’ Tifa exclaims, grabbing his arm, ‘I don’t have a Cure!’

Cloud checks his arrangement and goes a little grey. ‘Neither do I.’

‘I left my spear in the gate,’ Cid grunts, and looks at the bracer on his arm, where no green materia shine at him. ‘ _Fuck_!’

He’s been injured before, he’s had Demi3 cast on him, he’s been poisoned and stabbed and had a pint glass smashed over the back of his head, but this – this is something else.

Tifa and Cloud haul at the debris, but it’s not moving.

‘Oh, for fuck sake – don’t worry about me, get in that escape pod, ‘fore we crash into Meteor!’

‘I’m not leaving my friend behind,’ Cloud says, pulling a face at him, and he gives Tifa a nod, two, three, and they heave, but the metal won’t shift.

‘Just leave me here,’ Cid tells them, shoving ineffectually at the debris, ‘fuck it, leave me here, get in the pod, go on. Fuckin’ go.’

‘I’m not leaving you here,’ Cloud repeats, obstinate. ‘I don’t leave my friends behind.’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ Cid grunts, and gives the metal a half-hearted shove. ‘Don’t start that martyrdom bollocks again. Get going, you’ve got no time.’

It’s then that he really looks at it, at the debris, and the space where the oxygen tank had been and he sees the stencilling on it.

‘Tank number eight,’ he says, mostly to himself, as Cloud and Tifa try to haul the metal off of his leg, which is throbbing now, and he’s sure it’s the bloodflow.

The oxygen tank was always wrong. There was _always_ something wrong with it, and Shera had seen it, and she’d done her best to fix it, and she’d been willing to give her life to fix it long enough that Cid saw his dream. His dream had become her dream and it had nearly killed her.

‘Oh, God,’ he breathes, rubbing his face with a hand, sticky and damp with sweat and blood, ‘she was fuckin’ right. All this time, and I - Cloud, leave it, for fuck sake, just go. This is where I bow out.’

The door at the end of the corridor hisses and whistles open, and the smell of soap and clean linen wafts over to them, faint under the stink of Cid’s blood.

‘Don’t say that, Captain,’ Shera says, and Cid’s sure the skipping of his heart is doing nothing for stemming the blood flow. ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

She comes over, and her eye looks awful from this distance, so close that he can count the number of galaxies shining in the shades of purple and blue and yellow.

‘Shera,’ he sighs, and he looks at the tension in her neck as she heaves at the metal. ‘Woman, you ain’t gonna lift it.’

She narrows her eyes at him for half a second, and then looks at the metal seriously.

‘Woman, for fuck sake, you’re a fucking idiot. Just _leave_ me, you aren’t going to lift it!’

‘Physics,’ she replies, as though it’s that simple, and orders Cloud and Tifa to move around so that they can lever the metal off.

Cid curses up a storm as the weight levers into and then off his leg, and he says some things he’s not entirely proud of.

Most importantly, though, when Shera cuts him a look for the language coming out of his mouth, he opens it nicely this time, and apologises.

‘Sorry,’ he says, and he means it for a lot of things.

Mostly for doubting her about the oxygen tank, but also for calling her a cunt. She just smiles at him, one of those side smiles where her eyebrow raises, and he’s – he’s in love with her.

Cid’s leg is a mangled mess, all torn canvas and visible bone, but it’s nothing a Cure3 can’t fix, once they’re back on the Planet so someone can equip the materia and cast it. For now, Cloud ducks under Cid’s arm to help him to his feet, and Tifa takes the Huge Materia, and they hobble after Shera into the escape pod. Cid swears the entire way, and Shera, absently, makes shushing, placating noises as she keys in the information for the escape pod and shoves the door open to let them in.

‘I’ve been checking it regularly,’ she tells them when Tifa asks about it, ‘just to make sure it’s all still functional.’

‘If she says it’s good, it’s good,’ Cid grunts, and they lower him into a seat. ‘She was right about the oxygen tank.’

‘Captain?’ she asks, and goes pink.

‘You were right,’ he says, ‘about the tank. It was fucked. You were right. I’m sorry.’

She smiles at him, a full, beautiful smile with her teeth and sparkling in her eyes, and hits the button to release them. The air gets swept from his lungs at the momentum, but then it could have just been the way she looked at him.

He’s spent the better part of a decade looking at her slyly, catching glimpses of her where she can’t possibly look at him in turn, but he looks at her now and finds that it’s like he’s looking at her for the first time. Sat across from him, her gaze out of the porthole at the stars tumbling around them as they head back to the planet, and fuck knows where they’re going to crash-land, but he’s not even really thinking about it. He’s thinking about how he’s never really noticed the roundness of her chin, the perfect straight line of her nose, the softness of her mouth, the way her hair falls against her temple, curling around the arm of her glasses, glimmering with the stars. She has a smudge of oil on her cheek, and a streak of his blood on her ear of all places, but she’s – she’s so fucking beautiful he thinks he might choke on it. Maybe he’s going delirious with pain. It’s easily as bad as that fucking Valron, all those years ago, and his eyes are buzzing like when he got glassed, and he wants to throw up.

‘Shera,’ he breathes, and she glances at him.

‘Yes, Captain?’

But he doesn’t know what to say, even though it’s on the tip of his tongue. He’s kind of forgotten that Cloud and Tifa are there, and almost leans across the gap to just – he doesn’t know – kiss her maybe – when Cloud accidentally kicks the Huge Materia and the clatter it makes startles Cid out of the moment.

‘Uh, thanks, for sticking around,’ he says, which isn’t what he wants to say at all, but he’s suddenly hyperaware that Tifa is staring at him.

Shera laughs, breathy and uncertain, her eyes bright and confused. ‘Sure, Captain. Let me look at your leg. We should be stable now, it won’t take long to get back to the surface.’

Rubbing the back of his neck, he looks out over the blackness again, and tries to ignore the prickle he feels of Shera’s fingers against his skin, carefully teasing the tattered edges of his trousers out of the way to look at the gash.

‘So this is outer space,’ he says, and his foot twitches, but Shera rests one hand on his ankle, fingertips so gentle that they feel like a concrete block. ‘So long, ShinRa Number Twenty-Six, you piece of shit.’

Shera snorts, and her thumb rubs, soothing, against his calf.

‘You’ll live,’ she tells him, ‘someone’s got a Cure materia, right?’

Cloud nods, ‘Barret has one. We didn’t really think about our equipment when we got here.’

Shera smiles and shakes her head. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry. He’s made of some pretty solid stuff, the Captain. You know, a few years ago, he took a Valron’s Demi3 straight to his chest?’

‘Took a Grand Spark not an hour ago,’ Cid grunts, half under his breath, as though they're remotely comparable, and Shera returns to her seat.

He tries not to notice that her feet are braced against his, but the warmth of her is distracting, and he’s trying so hard to focus on the stars, to pay attention to whatever nonsense Cloud and Tifa are saying.

Shera laughs at something, and he chokes on a breath, clutches his erratic heart.

‘Captain!’ she exclaims, and reaches across the space to take his hands. ‘Are you alright?’

He chokes, nods, and casts a look at Tifa, who raises her eyebrows, smile on her mouth. Fucker.

Fuck her.

A beep from the console by the door, and Shera makes a little noise of surprise.

‘Oh, we fell faster than I thought! Uh – you might want to brace yourselves, it’s looking like we’re going to hit the ocean.’

It’s agony to pull his leg back, getting his feet behind his knees, but he breathes his way through it and ducks his head, watches to make sure the others do it too. He’s not being the sole survivor of this bullshit because he did as he was told. Though, it would make it one of the first times he’d done so.

Which would be enough to kill anyone out of shock, he supposes.

The landing is harder than the take-off, and they hit the water hard enough to break the surface and roll for a moment, completely submerged, before the pod rights itself and begins to float.

‘Better call the _Highwind_ for a lift,’ he says, when the world stops spinning.

Why is it, he wonders, as Shera clambers over to the door to shove it open and get some air in, poking her head out to see where they are, that they take this kind of thing in their stride? Crash-landing an escape pod? Nothing. Fighting monsters? Easy. Being a large part of the destruction of the world? Simple.

But Shera? Acknowledging how he feels, and being able to – to open his mouth, and talk about it, and even now, even though he’d said it out loud to Tifa, and a weight had been lifted from his chest for it, even so. He can’t get his thoughts in order, he can’t breathe for the weight of it.

‘Cid?’ Cloud asks, ‘hey man, don’t go passing out on us. I don’t know if I could get your fat ass out of here.’

‘Fat,’ Cid snorts, and blinks Cloud back into his line of sight. ‘Nah, I ain’t copping out. Just. Thinking about – Meteor.’

Cloud frowns, but Tifa’s talking, and she’s enthusiastic, and she’s full of energy, and he turns his attention to that instead. For a moment, Cid has blissful, agonisingly blissful, peace, and then Shera’s hand rests warm on his bare bicep, the other hand’s fingertips on his cold cheek.

‘Captain,’ she murmurs, eyes so warm and seeking his out, ‘the _Highwind_ is on its way, just stay with us long enough to get out of the pod, and then we’ll get you fixed up.’

‘I’m fine,’ he assures her, and the back of her fingers brush against the stubble on his jaw.

‘I think,’ she says then, to the other two, ‘that you’d be best served staying in town tonight. I’m sure your friends have managed to – uh – handle the troops in town.’

Cid snorts, and Shera squeezes his shoulder, familiar and comforting, and pokes her head out of the door again. Cid turns his gaze to the porthole, watches the waves lapping at it, and lets his brain think of other things. Anything that’s not Shera, because there’s a lot of her in there, too much of her, and he can’t stand it.

* * *

He’s a little stiff on his leg now, but he’s up and walking, and that’s enough. The _Highwind_ came and picked them up, and they didn’t question orders to return to Rocket Town, even though their Captain was being held up by Cloud and Shera, green and grey more than anything, a bit vague around the eyes, and with the rolling stomach of someone swallowing vomit. Barret had been quick about casting a Cure3, and the jolt of his tibia smashing back into place and his skin knitting made him both scream through his teeth and throw up, and Shera just sort of sighed next to him, ran a hand over the back of his neck.

He can still feel that hand on the back of his neck, and rubs his face.

‘Grow up,’ he murmurs into his palm, and staggers down the gangway.

His house is – it’s not quite right. Something’s changed, and he doesn’t know what it is at first. The others have been corralled by Reine into the Inn to shower and have something to eat, and he’s – grateful, incredibly so – for the privacy this affords him.

Shera comes in behind him, humming at him stood there in the kitchen and staring at the wall.

‘What is it?’ she asks, and shucks her coat, hangs it up and shuts the door. ‘Captain?’

‘Shera, I – I’m really glad you’re here.’

Her cheeks go a little bit pink, and a smile plays on her lips for a second, then she turns her eyes away, eases her fingers under her glasses to touch the bruising.

‘We’d, uh,’ she starts, licks her lips, and Cid licks his, reflexively. ‘We’d better get you cleaned up. Do you think you’ll be alright to shower, or would you rather a bath?’

He laughs in the back of his throat, a scoff more than a real laugh. ‘A shower’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.’

‘I’ll get the kettle on while you shower,’ she says, and then makes a gesture that could be a way of telling him to fuck off, or could be a nervous point of her finger as her blush darkens even more and she scurries to the back door. ‘I’ll just get you some clean clothes,’ she throws over her shoulder.

He hasn’t seen her blush like that since he lit a cigarette with a match, and he pats his trouser pockets down, his chest, but his jacket is fuck knows where, abandoned in the name of the rocket, and later he’ll find it in the launch zone, somehow intact, and his spear’s fucking gone, but that’s besides the point. Right now, he doesn’t have a lighter.

But he can’t smoke in the shower, so he’ll worry about it afterwards.

Being clean feels fucking amazing, and he watches the blood and dirt and grime swirl between his feet as it flushes down the drain for the time it takes for the water to run clear, and he finds himself thinking about all sorts of things, things that don’t matter. Things that do. The door creaks, and Shera’s hand appears, a t-shirt and boxers and trousers in her grip. She blindly sets it down on the edge of the sink and retracts her hand again, door clicking shut.

He loves her. He loves her so fucking much, and it’s going to get him killed, no doubt, because he’s going to slip over in the shower in his haste to shout a thank you to her.

‘You’re welcome!’ she calls back.

He makes sure he dries between his toes and under his arms and his hair is a static mess by the time he’s finished scrubbing the towel through it, but he’s trying his best. He looks in the mirror as he belts his trousers, and wonders if he should shave. He hasn’t shaved in almost a week, but he doesn’t think he looks _bad_ for it.

And then he catches himself, and blows a raspberry.

‘Behave,’ he says, ‘fuck sake. Grown ass man.’

Shera has two cups of tea nearly made when the door bangs open without warning. Cid grabs the nearest heavy object and tosses it, only to narrowly avoid hitting Yuffie in the face.

‘Fucking brat!’ he snaps, at the same time as she calls him something very impolite.

‘Last time I give you the delight of my presence!’ she exclaims, as imperious as the Empress she should have been able to become, and throws herself into a chair at the table. ‘The girl at the Inn wants to know if you’re eating with us, or if you’re going to stay here in your little love nest.’

Cid wants to throttle her, but Shera’s giggling behind her hand, and he hates that he melts at the sound, because it feels like another lifetime, the last time he made her laugh.

‘We’ll be there to eat, fuck sake, give a man half an hour to have a fucking cup of tea.’

Yuffie eyeballs him, and then looks at Shera, and looks at him again, and raises an eyebrow.

‘Well, it’s almost ready, so you’d better be sharp.’

And she backflips out of the chair, just be a fucking asshole, and slams the door behind her.

‘She is _always_ like this,’ Cid tells Shera, who is still stood there with a hand over her mouth, though now her eyebrows are raised.

‘Captain,’ she says, and he just waves a hand.

‘Just worry about the tea,’ he says, collapsing into the chair Yuffie hadn’t tucked back in, ‘you know Reine will keep two plates warm.’

He yawns, rubbing his face with his hand, and watches her as she finishes putting the tea together, the way her hip moves just a breath as she stirs, the way she bounces on her heels just a little bit, deeming the job well-done, and then she places one mug in front of him, sitting on the opposite side of the table with her own. He watches her for a second, and then chances bracing his feet on her chair legs. She doesn’t immediately draw her legs back, lets them brush against his for a moment, before tucking them neatly under her seat.

‘Are they going to stay here, do you think?’ she asks, and he takes a second to squint at her.

‘What? Oh, that lot. No, Reine will make them stay in the Inn, you know what she’s like. Be glad to have some decent company.’

‘She’s had ShinRa there all week,’ Shera offers.

Cid chokes on a mouthful of tea, and laughs. ‘Poor John. Changing the sheets was the worst part of the innkeeping business.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Stop saying sorry,’ he replies, without even really hearing himself do it. ‘Before I came out here to build the rockets, and before they moved out here, they had an inn in Midgar, they not tell you?’

‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

‘I used to help out,’ he shrugs, ‘do odd jobs and that.’

He frowns then, sure she knows this, and the look in her eyes when they meet, the surprise, but the smug little contentment. Oh, she knows, she just – he doesn’t know what she wants out of it all. To listen to him talk, maybe. Fucking weird girl, is Shera, who knows what goes through her fucking head.

‘Oh,’ she says, and smiles. ‘Better drink up, Captain, before Yuffie comes back with support.’

He gives her that, and downs his tea in three, halfway to the sink before he’s finished the second gulp.

He shoves into his boots, which are still a little damp with blood, which is going to ruin the socks he’s just put on, but whatever, laundry is as laundry does, and they head off towards the Inn.

Rocket Town looks strange now; thankfully, there’s been very little property damage, though a few walls are riddled with bullet holes, and that could have been either Barret or ShinRa, the way all of them shoot. Cid raises his hand to Ana, who’s sweeping up some mess or another on the porch, and she waves back.

Reine is glad to see him, and he only objects a little to having her arms thrown around his neck.

‘Reine, please,’ he says, and she pats his cheeks, gestures at the table.

He obligingly takes a seat, and Shera takes the one left next to him. Even as Barret starts up with some recounting of everything that had happened while they were on the rocket, Cid is overcome with such an urge to just. Put his hand on Shera’s leg, since it’s right there. He’s lounging in his chair with his hands in his pockets, so it’s not like anyone would notice. Even if it’s only for a moment, he feels like that’s something he should do.

Dinner is nice, the way dinner as a group – as a family – is always nice. Reine has cobbled together some help-yourself bullshit, and bowls and serving spoons are passed around and requests for seasoning is shouted down the table around mouthfuls of bread rolls, and Cid just – he looks at Shera, and she meets his gaze, and they both know it. It’s like the early days, like having the mechanics all hollering at each other, and the banter is a very different kind, because AVALANCHE have a very different kind of life experience, but the camaraderie is there.

If the world does end, Cid thinks that this will probably be the thing he misses most in the Lifestream. The real deep belly-laugh he gets from listening to Tifa ribbing Vincent over something innocuous like mashed potato, or the way Red gets gravy on his nose and Yuffie dabs it off for him (which, admittedly, brings a soft moment of grief, because that’s what Aerith’s role at the table was, when she was here to have a role at the table) and the way that Barret talked about his hopes and dreams for the Planet. Shit, Cid thinks he’ll miss all of this.

When dinner is done, and they’re stuffed full of dinner and dessert and Yuffie is falling asleep in her hand, Cid gets to his sore, aching feet, and bids them goodnight.

‘You’re not staying?’ Tifa asks.

‘I have my own bed,’ Cid replies.

John, at the bar wiping down glasses, snorts. ‘When was the last time you _actually_ slept in a bed, Captain? Be honest, now.’

Cid doesn’t flush, because Cid is a grown man. But he does heave a breath, point a finger, and accuse John of being rude.

‘You know full well I sleep.’

John holds his hands up, though really it just looks like he’s raising a glass and a towel. ‘Yes, sir,’ he snorts, and Cid sticks two fingers up.

‘Eight sharp on the _Highwind_ ,’ he announces to the group still sprawled over the table, ‘else I’m leaving you all behind.’

‘Gonna save the world by yourself?’ Tifa asks.

‘If I fuckin’ have to, Tifa. If I fuckin' have to.’

He throws a hand up in goodnight, and Shera does the same, follows him out into the cold of the night.

‘It’s beautiful out here,’ she says, and Cid looks up at the stars above them, the moon shining bright and silver.

Everything is tinted ever so slightly red, Meteor staining the horizon and half the sky. It’s beautiful in a terrible sort of way, the way that poisonous flowers are often the prettiest, the way spiders have beautiful webs to trap insects.

‘Yeah,’ he says, and looks back at her. ‘Yeah, it’s pretty beautiful.’

Shera brushes her hair back, glances at him, and then breathes out a laugh.

‘Captain, you’re – you must be tired, come on. You have an early start tomorrow, and it’s already late.’

He supposes she’s right, the way she’s usually right about these things.

He lets her into the house first, and shutting the door feels – feels – it feels like coming home, for the first real time.

* * *

He jolts awake after only an hour or so asleep. This is the way it usually is; the house is quiet, too quiet, no electronics buzzing, no hum of mechanisms whirring. He blinks back the flutter of a black coat, and hauls himself out of bed. Into his trousers, and tucking his T-shirt in, he picks up his cigarettes and off he plods downstairs.

Bit of fresh air, he reasons. Bit of fresh air and a bit of nicotine, and he’ll be alright for another couple hours’ sleep. He’ll let the trainee take over flying tomorrow, hunker down behind one of the consoles and catch a couple hours there, too, which will no doubt be better sleep than anything he gets in his own bed. There’s a reason he slept in a chair next to the fridge at the Inn.

The wood of the porch is cold beneath his feet, and the grass damp with midnight dew, but he’s grateful for it. He understands, a little, why Shera takes her shoes off so often, why the ground beneath her feet feels so much better than the thickness of work-boot soles.

He lights the cigarette and takes a slow drag, watches his exhale spiral and dissipate, and picks his way across the grass to the far side of the house, figuring he’ll actually take a look at the _Bronco_ again, now that she’s back in her spot.

He doesn’t expect to see Shera outside either, arms around herself and staring up at Meteor.

‘Hey,’ he says, as gentle as he can to not startle her. ‘What are you doing up?’

‘Hm? Oh, it’s you, Captain. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘I can see that,’ he grins, and she offers him a smile, tightens her grip on her cardigan.

‘You couldn’t sleep?’ she asks, and he shakes his head, comes to stand next to her.

‘Listen, Shera,’ he breathes, and rubs his thumb across the filter of his cigarette, tries to get the words onto his teeth so he can spit them out. ‘I – I need to say that – I’m sorry. I’ve been – horrible.’

She blinks slow, smiles. ‘No, Captain. You could have been horrible. You were merely – awful.’

The laugh comes out of him unbidden, and he chokes on it. Chuckling around a drag of his cigarette, he breathes out through his nose, and he rubs the back of his neck.

‘You’re something else,’ he says, and flicks the cigarette into the nothingness. ‘I mean it, though. I’m sorry. You were right about the oxygen tank, and I should have listened, but you – Shera, you could have _died_ because of that fucking stunt! I’m still fucking cross about that!’

Shera’s lips quirk, and she shrugs her shoulders a little. ‘You needed oxygen to get to space, and it was my job to get you there.’

‘The oxygen tanks weren’t your job.’

‘But I knew,’ she says, ‘and if I hadn’t – who would have? I know you – you aborted the launch for me, and it cost you everything, and I’m sorry for that.’

‘Stop fucking apologising,’ he says, and turns to look at her, but she’s closer than he expected her to be, and he finds the next thing he wanted to say completely gone from his head.

She’s so fucking beautiful. She clearly hasn’t slept beyond the cursory half-hour’s doze everyone ends up doing before their brain gets them back up. Her ponytail is scruffy, but her face is clean now, his blood gone from her ear, and he finds himself staring at her, studying her eye and the way her lips are slightly parted, the warmth of the gold in her eyes, the brightness of the green, a nebula contained in the body of a woman he fucking adores. Carefully, he brushes a fingertip across her cheekbone, just beneath the bruising, and she doesn’t flinch, but her eyes do twitch. Her fingers come up, knot into his T-shirt, and she looks at him, studies his face as he studies hers. Her eyes slowly close, and he cups her face with his palm, his other hand coming up to rest around one of her wrists, feeling the pulse under his fingertips.

He lowers his head just enough that their foreheads bump, come to a rest, a soft, warm weight. He can feel her breath, as he’s sure she can feel his – smell it, considering the cigarette – but she doesn’t complain, doesn’t comment. Just stands there with her hand splayed over his heart and the other tangled into his T-shirt.

‘Captain, I,’ she starts, but doesn’t quite know what to say next. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he whispers back, and hates that he sounds choked, hates that his eyes are closed but are burning, hates that his throat is itching. ‘It’s me that needs to apologise, Shera. I’m so fucking sorry.’

She nods, her hair rubbing against his forehead, and her cheek so soft against his fingertips. He daren’t hold her any tighter than he is, because he’s already holding too tight, this breathless little moth-wing grip he has on her is too much. He manages to blink his eyes open long enough to get a glimpse of her, her eyes closed and a smile on her mouth, and he loves her.

‘Shera,’ he chokes out, ‘I – I – you know.’

She hums, soft, and her head tilts just enough to rub their noses together.

‘Yes,’ she breathes back, ‘I know.’

He hopes she does, he hopes to the Lifestream and back that she _knows_. Her fingers curl against his heart, just a little, a press of the pads of her fingertips, and he tilts his head, rubs their noses again. She sighs, pleasantly, breath warm against his chin. For a long moment or two, they linger like that, just breathing in the other’s presence, forehead and nose and fingertips, her pulse a soft, gentle throb of life in his grip, the flutter of butterflies, and it would be worth dying, he thinks. If this moment, this quiet little moment, if this is all he has, he’ll die happy with it.

He’s not sure who moves first, but her nose brushes his cheek, and then he kisses her. It can be called a kiss, he thinks, even though it’s barely half a second long, and more their lips were in immediate proximity than actively seeking the other’s out. But a kiss is a kiss, and he did it. Dazed, and not sure it really happened, he feels the flutter of his heart reflected in her pulse, and she doesn’t open her eyes, so neither does he, and they stand there, brow-to-brow, for several more minutes. Her cheek is soft in his fingers, her jaw, her neck, the soft ends of her ponytail. The hand he’s not holding to his chest untangles itself, moves to his waist, rests itself like it belongs on the jut of his hipbone, and he takes a steady breath, rests his hand in the warm space on the back of her neck, the shape of her vertebrae against his calluses.

They don’t say anything for a long, long time.

When he finally opens his eyes, he finds her looking at him, her eyes so soft, so open, so – so full of –

‘Shera,’ he whispers, and she bumps their noses with a nod.

‘I know,’ she replies, and he hopes so.

They stand there for a moment or two longer, and then she slowly peels away. Not out of his reach, but far enough that she can see him without going cross-eyed.

‘It’s still early,’ she says, turning her gaze to look out over the first shocks of pink coming in at the horizon. ‘You have time to get another couple of hours in, before you need to leave.’

He looks at her, and wants to ask her to stay with him, to stay in his fingertips, but he slowly lets go of her nape, and of her wrist, stroking his hands down her arms, smooth and soft and pale under his worker’s tan, and finally letting go of her entirely. His skin, where she’s no longer touching him in turn, feels cold, bereft.

‘I suppose so,’ he says.

‘You know I’ll be here,’ she tells him, gently, like she doesn’t want to say something wrong. ‘Whenever you want to come back, I’ll be here.’

He wants to kiss her again, properly. Instead, he accepts the hand she runs across his forearm, placating, gentle and – dare he say it – loving, and goes back inside.


	12. The Next Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang work out what to do next, and tempers begin to fray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for language and everyone having a massive grump on. I have no idea where the grump came from, but they've all got one on them today.
> 
> Also, I know it's Diamond, but for brevity I'm conflating them.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies!

In another world, if Cid were another man, he’d wake to the sun shining prettily through the gap in the curtains, and the songs of the birds in the trees at the edge of the house. He’d wake and he’d take a moment to gather himself, and then he’d become aware of warm, soft skin pressed flush to his own, a leg thrown over his and toes between his knees. He’d find himself smiling, and his fingertips would brush, feather-soft, against loose hair, and he’d feel the heat of breath against his chest. He’d be warm, and sated, and probably ready to go again and he’d be – dare he say it – happy.

But this is not that world, and he does not have a very naked and very lovely woman draped over him in post-sex sleep, and so instead he wakes cold and alone with the red light of Meteor shining brighter than the dawn. There are no birds, there is no heated breath, and there’s certainly no satiation.

‘Fuck it,’ he grunts to himself, scrubbing his face with both hands before tossing the covers aside and hauling upright to get dressed.

He aches all over, from his ankles to the edges of his temples. Giving a few half-hearted stretches to try and get the worst of the aches and stiffness out, he finds a clean pair of socks in the drawer and pulls them on, trying his best to ignore the ache in his leg, where a scar has formed, pink and fresh, almost all the way around. It’ll fade, he’s sure, and he rarely gets enough of a tan on his legs that the scar will show, but it’ll be there.

He's halfway down the stairs when he remembers, very fucking vividly, that he’d kissed Shera. It wasn’t _really_ a kiss, but his mouth had touched her mouth, and she hadn’t punched him in the teeth for it, and he’s pretty sure she knows that he’s – he’s – that he’s in love with her.

It was never really under any doubt, when you actually stop and you think about it. There was _no_ doubt that he was in love with her, and it had only really been his own stubborn fucking will that had meant anything.

‘Fuck,’ he breathes, and touches his mouth, which isn’t burning with the memory of her lips, because he hadn’t even really kissed her firmly enough to get a feel of her mouth.

Shaking his head, because he’s going to get himself into more trouble than he has time to deal with, he finishes his trek down the stairs and lets himself back into the house, and why he didn’t just put the stairs _inside_ in the first place, he doesn’t know, but at least it’s not raining.

Shera is already up, because of course she is, even though the sky is grey and tinged with red, but she’s not dressed yet, in an over-sized T-shirt, the kind she’s always slept in (and he’s positive this time, even though he’s always positive, that it’s his – it is) and ShinRa issue pyjama bottoms that are an inch or two too long for her legs, bunching around her ankles in a way that Cid finds entirely too attractive for what it is. Her hair’s finger-combed back into a ponytail, her glasses covered in fingerprints, and her black eye is as purple as it was last night, but it doesn’t look nearly as swollen as it had.

Just bruised, and ugly, and his fingers itch to get whoever it was that did it, but John had assured him it had been dealt with, and he supposes that he has to take the guy’s word for it.

‘Good morning, Captain,’ Shera says, breezy and light and with a smile that could light the fucking sun.

‘Morning,’ he replies, and goes to help her with the tea, even though all he really does is get the mugs off the hooks and fetch the milk out the fridge.

‘It’s still early,’ she says, eyeballing him, ‘did you sleep at all?’

‘A little,’ he shrugs, and he doesn’t feel all that tired, all things considered. ‘I’ll probably catch a couple hours when we get airborne again.’

She nods, and potters about. ‘Make sure you eat a decent breakfast, then,’ she says, ‘to tide you over. I haven’t had much in, what with everything that’s been going on, but it should be enough, I think, to fill you up.’

He thinks, as he takes the tea she offers him, that before – well, before last night – he’d have been annoyed at her mothering, and frustrated by the care she seemed so adamant to pile on him, but now he’s softened by it, warmed. She cares, and she shows it in the most traditional, if fussy, way possible, and he needs to reciprocate, as best he can.

‘Thanks,’ he says, because that’s what you do. ‘I appreciate it.’

She blushes, pretty and girlish, and ducks her chin. He’s not seen her like that for a while, and wonders if that’s really all it takes.

‘Hey,’ he says, as she fusses with some eggs and bread and he watches her, chin on his hand and just, all he can do is absorb her.

She turns, hair falling in a waterfall off her shoulder and curtaining the side of her face. Fuck, she’s pretty.

‘Yes?’

‘I,’ he starts, but isn’t sure what to say. He knows what he needs to say, and he’s almost said it a couple of times, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it, can’t quite choke it out. It feels – wrong, almost. Like he’d be causing trouble. Starting something he might not be able to finish. No, best to say nothing for definite until he’s sure he can do right by it. ‘I’m glad you were right about the tank.’

Her lips curl, and she huffs out a laugh, rubs her neck.

‘Well,’ she says, in that sort of voice she has where she’s going to shirk any credit she could rightfully claim. ‘I was just doing my job, Captain. And I’m – I’m glad you made it back to earth.’

He looks into the dregs of his tea for a second, and then chances a glance at her; her ears are red, but she’s smiling into her own mug.

‘Well,’ he echoes, ‘I had you to fly me, so I couldn’t have gone wrong.’

‘You’re the pilot,’ she says.

‘Nothing without the team behind me,’ he shrugs, as if it’s that simple, and it is.

What he really means is; he’s nothing without her.

She finishes dallying with the eggs and plants a plate in front of him, and he’s grateful for it, he is. Any meal he doesn’t have to cook is a meal he’s grateful for, even if it is one of the kids’ awful cooking. He’s perfectly competent, but no sensible man turns down the opportunity to eat without having to cook.

He nods at her, and waits until she’s sat with her own plate before digging in.

Breakfast eaten, plates washed, and ablutions complete, Cid hovers at the door. He doesn’t want to go, but it’s nearly eight, and he wouldn’t be a very good captain if he didn’t heed his own command.

Shera is dressed now, in her well-worn, familiar mustard yellow sweater and cargo trousers. Her socks look thick and her hair’s neatly brushed. She hovers, plucking at threads at the end of her sleeves, and peers at him from behind her glasses, like they’re a barrier she can’t pass.

‘You’re going,’ she says, and he nods.

‘Yeah, it’s – it’s nearly eight. Can’t say I’m much good as a captain if I’m not there on time.’

But he hovers in the doorway, and makes no effort to cross the threshold.

‘You’ll be safe, won’t you?’ Shera asks, and inches closer, until she’s toe-to-toe with him, her feet looking so small compared to his boots.

Her fingers are still fiddling with her sleeves, and he wants to take her hands, hold them tight, hold them to his heart so she can feel the truth of it when he says he’ll do his best.

‘I’ll come home,’ he says, and clenches his fists in his pockets, as tight as he can, nails biting into his calluses. ‘One way or the other.’

She nods, and for a moment, her hands hover like she’s about to fling them over his shoulders.

‘Okay,’ she says, with a firm nod. ‘I’m – I’ll be here. I’ll be waiting.’

Before he registers what he’s really done, he reaches up and brushes her hair back from her face, tucks it behind her ear, fingers soft against her cheek. She turns into it, just a little, eyes half-shut. He loves her. He loves her. _He loves her_.

‘Shera,’ he whispers, and his fingers curl, cup her jaw, bringing her halfway in.

‘Yes?’ she whispers back.

He’s half a mind to kiss her again, to slam the door shut and fuck being on time, but there’s a holler from across the way, and he jerks away, turning to find Barret waving an arm.

‘Come on, old timer!’ he yells, ‘time to get moving!’

‘Fuck sake,’ Cid grunts, and glances back over his shoulder to Shera, who’s flushed pink and taking a step back. ‘I’d best get after them.’

‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘Stay safe, Captain, and come back any time you can.’

He nods, and takes one last look at her before picking up his feet and jogging after the ragtag group of numbskulls heading out of town.

* * *

Once on the _Highwind_ , talk turns from what good beds they are in the _Shanghai_ to what their next move is going to be.

‘Rufus’ plan was a failure,’ Cloud says, by way of broaching the topic. ‘The rocket didn’t stop Meteor, and I don’t think it would have helped them to have the Huge Materia. It didn’t even look like the rocket hit it.’

‘We’ve been causing them no end of trouble,’ Cait says, ‘but I wonder – were we wrong? I can’t see another way.’

Red, looking forlorn and worried and small for all the growing breadth of him, heaves a heavy sigh. ‘It makes you worry.’

Tifa snorts. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says, ‘ _think_. There has to be another way!’

Cid scratches his neck, and leans on the railing, cigarette in his free hand.

‘She’s right, you know. Way I see it,’ he says, ‘once you start worrying, there ain’t no stopping it. You worry about one thing, and then it’s another and another, and before you know it, you made yourself sick. Things start falling apart and they get worse and worse. Then you’re too sick to put them right. But there’s – that’s why there are doctors, eh?’

Barret raises an eyebrow, his lips twisting into something knowing that Cid knows he doesn’t like.

‘You’re pretty optimistic,’ Barret says. ‘What got you all perky?’

Cid licks his teeth. ‘Just been thinking. Spent a lot of time awake last night, and I was – space made me think.’

‘I’ll bet it did,’ Barret hums, too knowing, and he’s put down enough that Yuffie can pick it up, bright eyes and wide, manic grin behind the daze of the tranquilisers.

‘You,’ she starts, too loud and too full of glee. ‘You mean – you and Shera?’

Cid ignores her. ‘As I was saying, I was doing a lot of thinking. When you’re down on the ground, everything feels – big. It feels so big, the mountains, and the oceans, and the _buildings_. It’s all – big. Bigger than you can really – you can’t think about it without feeling – small. But it’s not _us_ that’s small! It’s not us, it’s the Planet! We were up there, and we were looking down at her, and she’s _small_ , she’s just a – a kid, floating in this huge dark universe. She’s small, and she’s sick – Sephiroth is a fucking _sickness_ , killing her from the inside out, and when you’re up there, floating in that darkness, you feel powerless. What can you do to stop it? Fucking nothing. But down here – on the surface, where everything else is so big. The Planet, she needs a protector, right? She needs someone to take care of her the way your dad does, your mum, your whatever. Your doctor, when you’re sick. They take care of you, they make you better, they _cut the fucking sickness out_.’

‘Cid,’ Tifa starts, and his knuckles crack when he clenches his fist.

‘Sephiroth is a sickness,’ he repeats, firmer, ‘he’s a sickness, and we need to cut him the fuck out. The Planet is small, and scared, and she’s this tiny little trembling thing in the middle of a fucking huge dark universe, and we are _nothing_ , but we can do _something_ , you know? We gotta do _something_.’

The entire time he’s talking, Yuffie’s got that same manic grin on her face, and she’s bouncing on her heels, hooting and hollering about him _finally_ getting laid, and how it’s been such a long time coming, and how she’s so glad she didn’t sleep at his house, and he couldn’t have talked any louder over her if he tried.

‘Yuffie,’ he says, finally, because Tifa’s looking at him with a softness that makes him itch, ‘shut the fuck up. Nothing happened.’

She stops dead mid-yell. ‘What?’ she asks.

‘Cid,’ Tifa says, to derail the conversation before it gets started, ‘that was – beautiful.’

Barret snorts, though he still has a look of knowing on his face. ‘Yo, man, you got to me, and I can’t stand that shit. I’m gonna fuckin’ cry. So we kick Sephiroth’s ass, no problem. But how are we going to protect the Planet from Meteor?’

At this, Cid hesitates, rubs the back of his neck. ‘I – I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. Just about Sephiroth.’

Tifa snorts, and Barret actually laughs. Yuffie takes this as permission to start back up on the sex thing, and because Red is a teenager, no matter how wise he thinks he is, he starts up as well.

‘Oh, shut your mouths,’ Cid snorts, and stomps over to the steering yoke. ‘Fucking bunch of children, the lot of you.’

He’s doing his best to ignore the looks boring into the back of his neck when the _Highwind_ suddenly rocks, and an awful, terrible noise screeches through the air around them, a moaning, screeching sort of sound.

‘The Planet,’ Tifa says.

‘Are you sure?’ Cloud asks.

She wrinkles her nose in surprise. ‘Did you forget?’ she asks, not unkindly. Cid wonders, as he fiddles with the controls, what the inside of Cloud’s head looks like these days. ‘Bugenhagen told us.’

‘Let’s go see him!’ Red cries out, doing a little hop that takes him almost above Yuffie’s head. ‘He will be able to tell us something!’

Anything, at this stage, will be worth listening to, Cid thinks, and frowns at the controls. Someone’s fiddled with the ship, and the turn axis is far tighter than it used to be as he swings her around.

‘Someone’s upgraded her,’ he says, ‘these readings – the engine was always – what a fucker.’

‘Cid?’ Cloud asks.

‘Shera,’ Cid says, ‘she’d been talking about this hunk of junk’s potential since we started building her. She’d always intended to upgrade the engine, get the jets working, but she’d never had time, and then Rufus fucking stole it. That – that was why she was up last night. Remapping it, I guess.’

Cloud eyes him. ‘Just for that?’

Cid sneers and shoves at him. ‘Fuck off, kid. You’re as bad as the brat.’

‘You are very chipper,’ Cloud says, which is a word Cid hasn’t heard in years.

‘Mate,’ Cid says, and gestures at his leg, ‘I had my fucking leg torn apart yesterday, I went to space, I lost the fucking rocket because of you numbskulls and your shit with ShinRa, which sure, I played a part in. But – I went to space! I very nearly died! Let a man live!’

Barret, on the other side of the deck, snorts.

‘You aren’t defending yourself very well,’ he says, ‘sure sounds like you got laid.’

‘For fuck – Listen!’ Cid exclaims, as exasperated as he could possibly be, even going as far as to point his finger at them all. ‘You wanna know the sad fucking truth? You know wanna know the joke that is my life? I haven’t had sex in – fuck me, the better part of ten years! I was what, twenty-four, when Shera showed up? Fuck it, however long that is, add a couple for the fucking mess I was before the rockets started. Ten years, fuck it! And I certainly did not fucking break that streak last night! Fuck me, you think I’m _that_ much of a savage?’

‘But,’ Tifa starts, and Cid turns to her, finger pointing wildly.

‘Don’t you fucking start,’ he warns, and she holds her hands up. ‘Man has a good mood for once in his life, and suddenly he’s getting laid. Fuck me, can’t I just have a good night’s sleep?’

At this, Tifa laughs, and tells him that she knows him well enough now to know that he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in his life.

‘Oh, fuck the lot of you,’ he snorts, and feels a laugh behind his heart.

Aerith, too, can fuck right off. She’s got no grounds to laugh at him.

‘Let’s just get to Cosmo,’ Cloud says, which is the most mature thing he’s said in days.

‘Thank you, finally, some sense.’

And so Cid steers them off towards Cosmo, and tries to ignore the burning eyes in the back of his neck.

* * *

Because Barret is an asshole, he’s still chuckling to himself as they disembark, and Cid tries his best to trip him. But for all the hulking size of him, Barret is nimble enough to avoid the attempted injury, and just laughs at him. He opens his mouth, and Cid knows some crude, boyish quip is going to come out of it, so he takes a few long steps and gets out of conversation range.

He might as well have stayed to have that quip thrown at him; by the time they reach the gates of Cosmo Canyon, the atmosphere has shifted from the casual jovial teasing at Cid’s expense to a melancholy disquiet, a discomfort in their skins as they look up at the redness of the sky, the hovering Meteor shining like a second sun. Cosmo itself is quiet, and the chap at the door tells them that the children won’t come out to play, that they’re scared.

‘Where is Grandfather?’ Red asks, and the chap gestures over his shoulder.

‘Same place as always,’ he says, ‘up in the observatory.’

They trudge up the steps, not saying a word to each other, and find Bugenhagen fiddling with the machines, humming to himself.

‘Ho, ho!’ he exclaims, as they file in, one after another. ‘You’ve come back!’

Cid looks at Barret, who does a slow peruse of the ceiling, and then positions himself close to the door and out of the old man’s line of sight. Yuffie settles herself down at his ankles, head on the wall and arms around her knees. He doesn’t pet her hair like a dog, but he rests his fingertips on her crown, just for a moment, before digging a cigarette from his pocket.

‘Grandfather,’ Red says, as the others cling to the walls as much as possible, out of Bugenhagen’s way. ‘We need your wisdom.’

‘Lost your way, have you?’ Bugenhagen asks. ‘Well, ho, ho, ho, you must look inside yourselves! Look to the deepest reaches of your hearts, and you will find your answers there! Something forgotten, perhaps! It will come to you!’

Cloud snorts under his breath. ‘Easy for him to say,’ he murmurs, which makes Tifa’s lips twitch. ‘I can’t remember shit.’

‘Then look harder!’ Bugenhagen exclaims, gaze fixed so pointedly at Cloud that it makes the boy blush high in his cheeks. ‘It will be there!’

Yuffie turns her head to look up at Cid, who looks back at her and shrugs with his eyebrows.

‘I don’t get it,’ she whispers, ‘I can’t see anything.’

Cid takes a drag of his cigarette, and wonders whether he’s thinking about the right thing. He supposes Bugenhagen expects them to have heard something, or seen something, that will give them a hint about how to proceed against Meteor. Fucking Sephiroth up is the easy part, but how to defend the Planet from destruction? A touch harder to get a viable plan together for. But Cid’s just thinking about Shera, and how he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, and how he wants to kiss her properly. And then a tug, on his heart, and he abruptly remembers Aerith, knelt on the altar and looking at them with such an odd peace, a contentment that she’d seen them all one last time, and he chokes on an inhale.

‘I think about Aerith a lot,’ Cloud admits. A low murmur of agreement ripples across the party, and then he adds, ‘and how she – she’s been with us, in our hearts, all along.’

‘I was thinking the same,’ Tifa admits, ‘and how – how sometimes, I go to look at her, when I hear a good joke I think she’d like. Or I see a pretty flower, I think she’d like to see it.’

Another ripple of agreement, some low murmurs of other things they’d thought about, little moments where the loss of her had stung the most.

‘She said she was the only one who could stop Meteor,’ Cloud says.

‘Do you think we can carry it on?’ Red asks. ‘What she tried to accomplish, I mean.’

‘We aren’t Ancients,’ Barret snorts, ‘so good fuckin’ luck.’

‘When she left us,’ Cid says, and flinches at the eyes whipping around to him, ‘she went to – fuckin’ – whatever the place was called.’

‘That’s it!’ Cloud exclaims, and Yuffie flinches back enough to headbutt Cid’s knee.

‘What’s it?’ Cid asks, rubbing at his knee. ‘Fuck’s the matter now?’

‘There’s something about the city,’ Cloud says, hurried and his fingers clicking at his thinks aloud. ‘Aerith knew something we didn’t – why else would she have faced Sephiroth without running away?’

‘Perhaps I should come with you,’ Bugenhagen says, ‘and see it for myself.’

‘You’re coming too?’ Red asks.

Bugenhagen laughs, and it sounds awfully frail. ‘Why so surprised, Nanaki? I like to leave this place from time to time! And besides, we might all die soon, so now’s the time to feel the most alive!’

‘Perhaps it is the planet!’ Red exclaims. ‘It is calling you, Grandfather!’

‘Fucking hell,’ Yuffie whispers, and Cid snorts.

‘The Planet is calling,’ he echoes, just as quiet, ‘hoo boy, sure thing, kiddo.’

He raps Yuffie’s shoulder with his knuckles and gestures at the door. She clambers to her feet and follows him outside, the rest quick to hurry after them.

‘What a load of shit,’ Yuffie says, too loudly, once they’re back on the stairs leading down the gate.

‘Just because you don’t believe it,’ Tifa says from some steps behind, ‘doesn’t mean that others can’t. Cid, you’re a terrible influence.’

‘Listen,’ he snorts, glancing over his shoulder and nearly falling down the next ten steps. ‘I’m a man of science. Planet-calling mumbo-jumbo ain’t my shit, and I ain’t about to pretend I care for it. As the old man said, we’re going fuckin’ die, so we might as well enjoy ourselves.’

Tifa rubs her eyes, and heaves a very heavy sigh indeed. Cid knows full well that unless he finds a very good excuse to stay busy, Bugenhagen is going to collar him and tell him fifteen and one million things about the planet and the beliefs of the Cosmo Canyon lot, and how the Ancients saved the world and all that other bullshit, but Cid, who has refused point blank to put any materia in his spear for some weeks, has no interest in listening. It’s close-minded, and he’s sure Shera would give him an eyeball or two if she caught him, but he doesn’t _care_.

‘Cid,’ Barret calls, and Cid, safely back on solid ground, looks back at him, ‘if you’re all for enjoying yourself, why you here, man? Shouldn’t be back home getting Shera pregnant?’

For a moment, Cid feels the entire universe stop dead in its tracks. He’s not even sure he’s breathing, that his heart is beating, that he can see or hear or smell or _exist_. Everything has just _stopped_. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it, so drunk he’d come full circle to sobriety, in those early days, when he’d still drank alcohol, before Shera had worn a dress that was too short and he’d gotten himself glassed trying to defend her fucking honour in _Wall Market_ of all places, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it when he was drunk. Only in that kind of way that you have when you’re desperately in love with someone and want them for the rest of your life and don’t want to admit to it, so you end up drunk and alone in a bar toilet, staring at your cracked reflection thinking about how terrible your own dad was, and how you wanted to see said love of your life with _your_ baby, and how you’d be a better fucking father than _Ricard Highwind_ ever could have hoped to be. He’d thought about it in that kind of way, where he couldn’t remember it in the morning, but had the bad taste in his mouth of someone who’d nearly told the wrong person about said thoughts. And he’d be even more of a fool to not acknowledge, to himself at least, that he’d had thoughts about the _process_ that goes into getting said baby, and he _hadn’t_ been drunk to have those thoughts, and so the whole universe collapses in around his temples, because shit, does he talk in his sleep or something?

Then the universe un-collapses, and it crashes into motion once again, and Yuffie’s holding his arm so tightly his fingers are going blue.

‘Cid,’ she says, the other hand on his chest, ‘Cid, for _fuck_ sake, old man, calm the fuck down!’

Barret’s eyes are wide, and Tifa’s mouth is half-open, as if she’d wanted to say something but hadn’t dared.

‘Dude,’ Barret says, with a huffed little laugh that’s not really a laugh at all, ‘fuck me, man, it was a joke. Taking the piss, aite, like we need another of you walking around, the fuck, man.’

Cid licks his lips, swallows, looks at Barret, Tifa, the ground, the hand Yuffie has around his arm. Slowly, he pats her fingers, and then grips her wrist, pulls her hand away.

‘You alright?’ she asks, and Cid sighs, slow and deep.

‘I’m okay,’ he replies, and pats her hand. ‘Come on then, we’d better get moving if we’re going back to the city before sundown.’

* * *

He doesn’t sit around with the rest of the party when they get airborne, just gives the trainee directions, and fucks off back to his cabin. Barret says nothing to him, and Tifa just looks at him with a small measure of concern.

Tired, he’d said, that’s all. He’s just tired, and he’s cranky, and he’s apparently still a fucking teenager, unable to take a joke about his lack of sex life on the chin. Even though it was less a joke at his expense, and more at Shera’s, and don’t people know that only the partner or the sibling can take the piss out of a loved one? It’s an unspoken rule, you just don’t do that shit.

Fuck sake, he’s sick of this. He’s sick of being away from her, and yeah, alright, fuck sake, yeah, he’d like to – to – he thinks he’d like to be a dad, if they survive all this, maybe. He can’t fucking stand kids, but his mother had talked fondly of how Ricard had changed when Cid was born, how he’d felt more complete, and maybe that’s the Highwind way. An incomplete mess until the bloodline’s secure.

Fucking joke, who gives a shit, he’d take his mother’s name gladly. He’s the spit of her anyway, blond and blue and with freckles in the sun. The foul temper is all his father.

‘So,’ Yuffie says, from her spot by the crates as he passes her, ‘we gonna talk about that whole thing back there?’

Cid snorts, and twists his lighter in his pocket. ‘Kid, if I was going to talk about the bullshit that goes through my head and the bullshit I have to listen come out of all of your mouths, I wouldn’t do it with you. No offence, but fuck that.’

‘Why did it bother you so much, though?’ she presses, though her cheeks are green, ‘thought that you two were a done deal and were going to have babies like, next week.’

Cid rubs a hand over his eyes.

‘Yuffie,’ he says, and hitches his trousers an inch to squat in front of her, ‘listen to me very carefully. If Shera ever forgives me for the shit I put her through, and we find ourselves in a position to even consider children, let alone have some, you lot will be the last fucking assholes to know about it.’

She frowns at him. He frowns back.

‘I’d be a great godmother,’ she offers, and then throws up in the bucket between her knees.

He pats her head, and leaves her to it.

* * *

The Ancients’ city feels – wrong, somehow. It isn’t that there is a stench of death over the place, because they are nowhere near the altar where Aerith died, but Cid feels like they are intruding nonetheless.

Truth be told, he’d rather not set fucking foot in the place again, but he supposes this is out of his hands; he’s a part of the party, and therefore must engage with it. Yuffie, woozy and tired, clings close to his side; he doesn’t hold her hand, but he leaves it free for her to take, if she finds she needs to. As they traipse along the dusty, empty paths, the place silent and aching, Bugenhagen makes positive little noises, oohs and aahs, saying “yes,” and, “I see,” as though he is listening to someone speaking to him at length about something interesting. Mad old coot.

Cloud and Tifa go up a set of steps after Bugenhagen, and they’re up on a plinth for several long minutes, having some quiet little discussion. Cid lights a cigarette and watches them, but doesn’t really give what they’re saying any real thought.

‘Cid?’ Yuffie asks, and tugs at the edge of his jacket.

‘Yeah?’

‘Do you think she’s mad at us?’

‘Who?’

Yuffie looks very small, and very sad, and a little bit far too old for how young she is. Again, Cid has the urge to take her home with him, to convert the back room and give her space of her own. Perhaps, even, he could give her one of their bedrooms, assuming they all survive this, and Shera wants to take up residency with him properly.

‘Aerith.’

Cid takes a long, thoughtful drag of his cigarette, and frowns at the figures on the platform, waving their hands about.

‘What would she be mad at us for?’ he asks, because he doesn’t see where the kid’s going with this.

‘For not saving her. For letting her die.’

‘She knew she was going to die when she came here, kiddo. I don’t think anything we could have, would have, or should have done would have changed that. I don’t believe in all that spiritual shit, but these things have a way of happening, whether you want them to or not. Fate, I guess. If you believe in it. She’d already made her mind up that she was going to die, and she’d have been mad at us for stopping her. Or trying to, anyway.’

It isn’t the comforting answer that Yuffie wanted, but Cid is not the person to be giving that kind of thing out. All he can do is tell it as he sees it.

‘I suppose,’ Yuffie breathes, and fiddles with her fingers.

‘She’s – I don’t know if she’s in a better place. But she’s done what she set out to do, and she had a boyfriend once, she said. Maybe she’s with him again.’

‘Zack,’ Yuffie says, ‘she told me. He was a SOLDIER. First Class – a real one, not make-believe like Cloud is.’

Cid snorts. Brutal.

‘Bit harsh,’ he says, and then shrugs, because she’s not wrong.

Cloud and Tifa come back down the steps and re-join the party. Tifa looks contemplative, Cloud pensive.

‘Yuffie,’ he says, and she perks up, just a little.

‘Yeah?’

‘There was a note, about a key for a music box, do you know where it is?’

Cid wrinkles his nose.

‘Yeah,’ Yuffie nods, which makes him unwrinkle his nose and raise his eyebrows instead. ‘Yeah, it was in a house, on the other path, I found it but I couldn’t get it to do anything. Why?’

‘I’ll explain as we go,’ Cloud says.

Yuffie does grip Cid’s hand this time, just his one finger, tight in her fist. He turns his hand as much as he can to close his hand around hers. It’s only for a few moments, and then she lets go.

Cloud tells them about Holy, the magic summoned by the White Materia Aerith had proudly proclaimed did absolutely nothing. He seems convinced that it spells the end, because when Aerith had died, it had fallen into the water, and they have no way now of retrieving it. But Holy would take away any badness in the planet, any evil, and it would be strong enough to counter Meteor. But without it, they didn’t have a choice.

‘Knowing there was something we could have done is worse than not knowing,’ he says, and Barret harrumphs.

‘You give up too easily, you spikey-brained little,’ but he hesitates, unsure what to call him, and so he settles for nothing at all. ‘Let’s see what this music box is, eh?’

‘Somebody’s perky,’ Cid murmurs under his breath, and Tifa whirls to give him a scathing look.

He holds his hands up, accepting that it was beneath him to be so petty. But it was justified. Fucking prick.

Bugenhagen follows Yuffie’s directions and they uncover the music box, the key for which looks more like the bone of some ancient creature than it does a key. Some tinkly little piece of music plays as the key turns in the box, set into the floor as it is, and they all look at each other. Though there had been no occasion for Aerith to play the piano as this piece sounds, she’d hummed the tune often enough that they recognised it.

Yuffie sniffles, and Cid bites the back of his lip. Though they’d talked, a little, about Aerith, and though he’d worked his way through most of the grief that first night on the PHS with Shera, it still catches him off-guard how much he misses her, how much the weight of her is on his – on all of their – shoulders. He misses her, her laugh, her curses, the way she was so easy to talk to and with, the banter and the backchat. He misses the way she’d stir up trouble and then wind it down again. Fuck sake.

The good die young and the bad reap the benefits.

He rubs his eye, itching with dust from the music box, and they all jump at the sound of water.

‘Ho, ho, ho!’ Bugenhagen laughs, and Red growls a little, because even he finds his grandfather grating, it seems. ‘Look at this! Come, come, let us go inside!’

‘Inside a waterfall?’ Barret asks, but the rest just shrug and follow the old man’s lead, crossing a narrow passage to jump through the water and onto the other side, where the little plinth Cloud and Tifa had been on has lowered, granting access to all of them.

Inside, the water is smooth, like glass, or a mirror. It doesn’t look at all like there’s any movement to the water, just a sheer projection.

‘It is a screen!’ Bugenhagen crows, clearly pleased with himself. ‘It is used to project an image! The Planet will show us what it wishes us to see, and perhaps we might have your answer!’

None of them are expecting to see Aerith again, as she was in those last moments, the smile that had crossed her lips for half a second. Yuffie cries out when Sephiroth descends, and there is no sound, thankfully, accompanying the image, but there doesn’t need to be. They all hear the blade run her through, they all hear the tiny gasp of breath. Yuffie’s breath hitches, and Cid obligingly turns, lets her hide her face. He can’t take his eyes off of it. Seeing it in the flesh – ha! – the first time had been hard enough, but to see it again, to be expected to watch it like they are going to be tested, it’s cruel.

Aerith wavers, the light fades from her eyes, and she slumps as the blade withdraws. The projection of Cloud rushes forwards to catch her, and the real Cloud twitches as if to do the same. But then, as they watch, Aerith’s happy little humming behind their ears, her ribbon unravels and out bounces the White Materia, small and unassuming and glowing.

‘It’s glowing,’ Cloud says, pointlessly.

‘A pale green!’ Bugenhagen agrees.

‘Then,’ Tifa starts, wringing her hands, ‘then Aerith’s prayer worked? She’d prayed for Holy?’

Cloud nods. ‘She did – and she – she gave her future for that. She said that she was the only one who could stop Sephiorth, that there was a secret here. I guess – I guess she knew, then. That there was – there was power here, to help her pray? I’m so sorry,’ he tells the fading projection of the flower girl, ‘I should have figured it out sooner.’

Tifa lays a gentle hand on his arm. Cid rubs Yuffie’s back, and she sniffles into his collar.

‘I understand,’ Cloud says, louder. ‘I know what has to be done. I’ll do the rest.’

‘I think you’ll find you mean _we_ ,’ Barret scoffs, ‘don’t think you’re doing this alone, punk!’

‘She’s given us a big fucking gift here,’ Cid agrees, ‘it’d be a fucking crime if we wasted it.’

‘But Holy’s not moving,’ Cloud frowns, and turns to Bugenhagen. ‘Why isn’t it moving?’

Bugenhagen does a little twirl, and then taps his chin. ‘Something is stopping it.’

At once, they all say, ‘him.’

It sounds quite eerie, coming from eight voices at once.

‘Told you,’ Cid says, ‘Sephiroth is a sickness, and we gotta cut him out so the planet can heal. Guess that means summoning Holy.'

‘I think you might be right,’ Tifa agrees, and offers Cid a smile that he can’t help but return. He feels wrong and out of place and they’re all grumpy as fuck today, but she’s trying her hardest, and he’d be remiss to not do the same.

‘Uh,’ Cait says, from some feet away as they leave the waterfall, ‘guys?’

‘What is it?’ Cloud asks.

‘So, uh – you remember how – you remember how the cannon disappeared from Junon?’

‘Yes.’

‘It didn’t disappear. It was moved. Rufus plans to destroy Sephiorth with it.’

‘Fucking let him,’ Cid snorts. ‘Saves us doing it.’

‘No, you don’t understand,’ Cait urges, ‘he’s moved it to where a lot of Mako is stored.’

For a moment, there’s silence.

‘Where?’ Cloud asks.

‘Where the fuck else is a lot of Mako stored?’ Barret explodes, ‘it’s gotta be Midgar! Right?’

Cait nods. ‘Midgar. They want to open the reactors to full, to give the cannon enough power for the new shells Scarlet’s designed. They’ll reach all the way to the Northern Crater, and they’ll destroy Sephiroth.’

Cid can’t say where the realisation comes from, but it comes to him all the same.

‘Reeve,’ he says, and the cat jumps.

‘Captain,’ the cat replies.

‘It’s not going to work, is it?’ he asks, if you open the reactors all the way.’

Cait – Reeve, because he hadn’t denied it, and Cid had only met him a couple of times, when he’d had to go to the main office for one thing or another, and when the man had comes down to the launch area to discuss building permanent structures there, but he knew enough about him to know he’s not a fucking idiot – shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says, ‘no, the reactors aren’t built to run at full capacity. It’s going to – it’s going to destroy Midgar if it’s not stopped. Or do some serious damage. Like when the plate dropped, but city-wide.’

Barret whirls around to look at Cloud, but Cloud’s already nodding.

‘We’re on our way,’ he says, ‘we’ll be – Cid, how long will it take?’

‘Not long,’ Cid assures him, ‘I’ll do the flying, and the engines should be good for full speed. A hour, two, maximum.’

‘Can you stall them?’ Cloud asks Cait.

‘I’m already trying,’ Cait says, ‘I’ll keep you updated.’

‘Come on, then!’ Cloud says, already making for the path back to the city entrance, ‘we need to mosey!’

‘Never say that again,’ Barret murmurs, but they all rush off after the SOLDIER anyway.

As they reach the _Highwind_ , the Planet shakes beneath them. They all cry out, yelling varying levels of expletives, and then a scream rattles in their ears, unnatural and ancient.

‘That thing again!’ Cid spits, ‘motherfucker! Get on board, we need a visual!’

Once airborne, they can see it, the thing from Mideel, plodding through the ocean and making a beeline for the Midgar coast.

‘Fucking asshole!’ Cid snaps, and swings around to the yoke. ‘Hang onto your britches, I’ll get us there in time to stop it!’

‘You think we can?’ Barret asks, ‘it tore us all a new asshole last time!’

‘Last time?’ Tifa asks, and Vincent heaves a breath.

‘While you were caring for Cloud in Dr Crescent’s clinic,’ he says, in the slowest possible way, ‘it saw fit to attack. We successfully fought it off, but it – was not happy about being resisted.’

‘That’s what destroyed Mideel?’ Tifa gawks, and looks out of the window at it.

‘But,’ Barret says, ‘that new cannon at Midgar should stop it, right?’

Cait shakes his head, ‘I don’t know if it’s ready or not. But even if it is, it’ll destroy Midgar! Not that you care, though, hey!’

Cid, focused on the coordinates and making sure they don’t crash into any fuckign pigeons, looks across at the robot.

‘The fuck did that come from?’ he asks, but the cat’s looking fierce, for an immovable robot.

‘I’ve been itching to say this for a while now!’ he explodes, and Barret looks taken aback. ‘I mean, who gives a shit about Midgar so long as Marlene’s safe, right? And she is, don’t worry! I might have had a hand in kidnapping her for insurance, but I made sure she was safe in Kalm with Mrs Gainsborough, so she’s going to be alright. But who cares about the rest! Just destroy Midgar, what does it matter! You blew Reactor One up, and how many people do you think died? Huh? Or do they not matter at all?’

‘It was for the good of the planet!’ Barret explodes right back, ‘you gotta expect a few casualties!’

‘The needs of the many, is it?’ Cait yells. ‘It might have been a few to you, Mr Wallace, but it was everything to those who lost someone! It was _everything_! You’re doing it for the good of planet, so who’s going to stand against you? Nobody! Do whatever you want, am I right? Nobody to stop you!’

‘I don’t wanna hear that from some ShinRa dog!’

‘Barret,’ Cid interjects. ‘Listen, Reeve is – he’s a prick, but he’s not one of the bad ones. He’s urban development, he’s about making the city safe for people. And I _know_ , alright! I know he didn’t do a good job, don’t look at me like that, it makes me sick to defend him, too, but we gotta be sensible about this shit! There’s a fucking giant monster out there about to attack Midgar, and we gotta fucking do something about it!’

‘Look,’ Tifa says, hands out placatingly as always, ‘Barret knows what he did – we all know what we did when we blew up the reactor, and nothing we can do will change that! We haven’t forgotten, and we’ll never forget! But we have to move forward, and do the right thing now! Right, Cloud?’

Cloud looks hesitant, and then jerks his chin.

‘Right!’ he agrees, ‘we’ll stop the WEAPON ourselves! Cid, you said you fought it before, right? What’s the strategy?’

‘Hit the bitch until it stops moving,’ Cid grunts.

Cloud considers this. ‘Yeah,’ he agrees with a nod. ‘Yeah, that’s good enough for me. Get your equipment ready guys, we’re going to be fighting as soon as we touch down!’


	13. Find a Reason

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Midgar and finding a reason to fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter, because I want the space kids to have their space, haha.
> 
> Language, as always. Some gore.
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

Cid is mid-air when the air abruptly shifts. Not a change in wind direction, no, no, this is a very pointed change in the charge of the air itself, the pressure, the atmosphere, the energy. He doesn’t have any time to get out of the Jump, so he braces himself for a damaging impact, and crashes into WEAPON, spear jamming nice and snug between plates of its armour. A shudder from the monster, and he’s thrown, spear still tight in his grip, some two-dozen feet across the ground. Hitting it and thankfully landing in the sand, he skids on his back another few feet, rolling to his feet ankle deep in the lapping surf.

‘Cid!’ Tifa yells, and he throws his hand up, spear waving as a sign he’s alright.

Nothing a Cure won’t fix, anyway, but he’s more worried about the pressure behind his ears.

‘Guys, something’s coming!’ he hollers, and his ankles ache as he jogs back into the battle, narrowly dodging a wayward shuriken Yuffie throws before skidding back into range to throw a Barrier up against a spitball the WEAPON throws in Red’s direction. Fucking magic.

Cloud throws a hand up at the monster, before dodging a stomp of its foot. ‘No shit!’

‘No,’ Vincent agrees, appearing out of nowhere, cloak a flutter of red against Cid’s periphery, ‘something in the air.’

Cid huffs out a thank you, obligingly planting his feet and bending his knees to let Tifa use his spear as a springboard for an attack.

The WEAPON, as abruptly as it had started to attack, stops. Tifa’s flurry of punches and kicks, and Red’s timely use of Fire3, seem to go unnoticed. It stomps in a circle, turns to face away from them.

Cid’s boots squelch with the seawater trapped in them as they back away to watch it open up its chest, drawing energy in a golden, glittering shadow against the sun.

‘The fuck is it doing?’ Barret asks, and Cid shakes his head.

‘Fuck knows, but I’m not going to be on the ground to find out! Back to the ship!’

‘It’s designed to protect the Planet, right?’ Cloud asks as they scramble up the rope ladder onto the deck. ‘Maybe it senses something.’

They look at him, and then the ship jerks, takes off.

‘Fucking amateurs,’ Cid scoffs, but they’re airborne, and getting out of range, and that’s all that matters.

At a safe distance, they watch as WEAPON unleashes an attack that would easily have reduced them to ash, had it aimed at them. But, Cid supposes, they’re just ants to it, an itch to scratch, and not a real threat.

The real threat is in the other direction.

‘Midgar!’ Barret exclaims, ‘fuck, Marlene!’

‘Safe in Kalm,’ Cait – Reeve – assures him, but the robot is nodding. ‘There’s – the cannon’s there.’

As if spoken into existence, a ray of light, so bright it blinds them, rushes past, fast enough to rock the ship, and Cid instinctively grabs onto Yuffie’s belt to hold her aboard, knowing full well she’ll be the first to go flying.

‘The fuck is happening?’ Barret demands, and they look, terrified, as the WEAPON is knocked back towards the ocean, hit straight off its feet and crashing to the ground.

‘The ray went straight through it,’ Vincent says, as though observing the weather, because that’s just the way Vincent is, and it’s oddly calming, if not for the terror in his eyes.

‘They’re going after Sephiroth,’ Cloud nods, because the ray is still travelling, north, north, north.

They’re staring at the ray travelling towards the Northern Cave and so miss the WEAPON’s attack hitting Midgar. Not that it would matter, the rumble that comes when the ray connects to the barrier is enough to make their ears pop, the _Highwind_ shuddering against the disturbance.

‘Fucking hell,’ Cid breathes.

‘Let’s get in,’ Cloud says, ‘we need to go and see it.’

They follow him inside, all of them still looking at the smoke coming from the horizon.

* * *

The barrier is gone.

‘Then,’ Tifa says, slowly, ‘we can – we can go after Sephiroth, now, right?’

Cloud nods, and looks at Cid, hovering at the console.

‘Can we get down there, in the airship?’

Cid snorts, claps the trainee pilot on the back.

‘Course we can,’ he scoffs, ‘this is my star student. He can go anywhere I can, and he’s stupid enough to go places I wouldn’t fuckin’ dare!’

‘Uh,’ the trainee says, ‘thanks, Captain.’

Cid laughs, claps him on the back again, and then turns at Barret’s muttering.

‘What now?’ he asks, and Barret nods at Cait, doing some odd little jig atop the Moogle.

‘Uh,’ Cait says, ‘um. Two things, guys. Rufus is – gone.’

‘Thank fuck for that,’ Barret mutters, and Tifa clips his arm.

‘And the Sister Ray is – it’s being overpowered. There’s too much energy going to it from the Reactors. I can’t turn it off. It’s – it’s been redirected to the mainframe.’

‘By who?’ Cid asks.

‘Hojo.’

‘Then do something!’ Barret yells, you’re one of their rats, ain’t ya? Turn the fucking thing off!’

The cat doesn’t reply.

Cid admits that he didn’t have the best first impression of Reeve, when they met all those years ago, and he doesn’t have the best impression of him now, given all that’s happened.

‘Listen, motherfucker,’ he says, and gets into the cat’s face, assumes that the eyes are cameras, seeing everything through a live feed. ‘We’ve been busting our fucking asses to get this far, you double cross us now and I will fucking kill you myself.’

Behind him, he feels Tifa reeling, eyes rolling and her breath huffing in a heavy, disappointed sigh.

The cat does not show any emotion, but he hears Reeve draw a breath.

‘I can’t make you trust me,’ he says, ‘but when I say I _can’t_ do it – ‘

‘Don’t you get it!’ Cid snaps, and yanks the cat off its ride. ‘I don’t give a fuck about Rufus, or ShinRa, or _you_. If you’re a decent fucking man – a fucking _human being_ – motherfucker, you save the Planet! Or do you not care?’

The cat tries to pry his fingers off his collar, but it does little.

‘No, I _can’t_! If I try to stop the reactors from this end, all hell will break loose!’

‘Just turn it off,’ Cid says, ‘shut the valve.’

‘Yeah,’ Cait replies, and he would never have expected a robot to be able to sound sarcastic. ‘Just turn it off. And do what, Captain? The Mako has to go somewhere, and if we shut the valves to stop it going to the cannon, it only has one escape route, and we can’t shut that off until it’s all burst out.’

‘Where is the escape route?’ Tifa asks.

‘Under Midgar,’ Cait replies.

Yuffie looks between them.

‘Then, if the Mako is going under Midgar – it’s going to – explode?’

‘Bigger than when the Number One exploded,’ Cait nods.

Cid dumps the cat back on the Moogle and rakes his hands through his hair.

‘We have to stop the cannon,’ Cait says.

‘Then we have to stop Hojo,’ Cloud reasons.

Vincent, silent until now, watching them with the same impassiveness that he always does, opens his mouth. ‘I will come with you. I have – unfinished business – with Hojo. I would see him one final time.’

‘No skin off my nose,’ Cloud snorts. ‘Cid, we gotta get back to Midgar.’

Cid nods, and jerks his chin to the trainee, who has been gaping at them the entire time. He pulls the yoke, and turns the ship about, and not for the first time, Cid thanks the Planet that Shera came back to work with him, that she was able to have an input on the things he did, that she helped him design and build this beauty.

‘We need a plan,’ Cloud says.

‘Operations room,’ Cid replies, jerking his head in the direction of the gangway.

So, out they file, one behind the other, heading to Operations to work out how exactly they’re going to approach this situation, the whos and whats and hows.

‘We’ll parachute,’ Cloud says, when Cid reminds him that even if Midgar is under martial law as Barret says, and the ground route in has been closed off according to Reeve, the air remains open, and there isn’t exactly a ceiling on the city.

‘We’ll parachute,’ Yuffie agrees, and Cid looks at her. She’s staring, bright-eyed, but clearly very deliberately putting herself in a different mental place, bracing herself for a re-run of the last time they jumped out of the _Highwind._

‘I’ll jump with you,’ Cid says, ‘you’ll be alright.’

Yuffie snorts, but she looks grateful.

They’re deliberating – arguing, really – about who’s going to go after Hojo, when the intercom goes to announce that they’re over Midgar.

‘Right,’ Cloud says, getting to his feet, ‘if anybody wants to stay aboard, they’re welcome to.’

Everyone looks at him like he’s gone mad.

Except for maybe Red, who’s last experience with a ‘chute had been even worse than Yuffie’s, and isn’t eager to repeat it. Cid can’t blame him for that, but the cat clearly doesn’t want to stay behind, so he obligingly lets Vincent strap him into his harness with him again.

‘On a count of three,’ Cloud yells, over the whistling of the wind.

The energy of the air around them, pulsing with the Mako being pumped too fast and too hard around the city, funnelled into the ray, it’s enough to make Cid’s hair stand on end, his teeth grit. Could just be Yuffie, clinging to him like a limpet, already green in the cheeks.

‘Three!’ Cloud yells, and they jump.

* * *

Getting underground is the easy part, and battling through the sewers isn’t too difficult. Hell, they manage to sneak back into the ShinRa building, for what seems like shits and giggles, without any trouble, even though Yuffie comes back to them with some pretty useful stuff that she kicked out of a vending machine. Cloud’s ears go a little pink at that, and when pressed, he admits that he’d kicked the same vending machines months earlier for stealing his Gil. Aerith, Tifa muses some time later, as they pick their way through the sewers once more, would have found that hilarious, and would claim that Cloud deserved it.

Cait reminds them that Heidegger and Scarlet are out to get them, which just makes Cloud laugh.

‘Like to see them try,’ he says, which is the cockiest thing any of them have heard in years.

They’re back on the surface, having run through the closed tracks for fuck-knows how many miles, when the ground shakes beneath them, and the clanking, crunching echo of metal grinding on metal rattles down the street towards them.

‘What the?’ Cid asks, whirling back to look. ‘Oh, for fuck sake.’

‘The fuck is that?’ Barret asks, looking at the – the – thing.

‘Are you kidding me?’ Yuffie asks, ‘that’s like, not even half the size of the WEAPON. Piece of cake.’

Cloud takes his sword off his back, expression perfectly neutral, and gets into a ready stance. The others follow suit, but each of them are tinged with mirth.

‘What a joke,’ Yuffie says, as the mech reaches up towards its cockpit and Heidegger and Scarlet step out onto its palm.

‘Is this the best they’ve got?’ Tifa asks, adjusting her gloves and looking for all the world like she’s examining her nails.

‘You’ve treated us like dogs!’ Heidegger yells, and Cloud raises his eyebrows. ‘You think you’re so strong, well, let’s see how you cope against this! Anti-WEAPON artillery! The strongest thing you’ve ever faced!’

Without looking at each other, the gang look around themselves, looking at the scenery, their shoes, their weapons, bored.

‘Worthless!’ Scarlet exclaims, ‘worthless brats! This is my proudest creation! The surest thing I have ever made!’

Tifa’s glove creaks. ‘I will slap her again, I swear I will.’

‘I’ll show you!’ Scarlet shrieks, and gestures.

The mech pulls them back into the cockpit, and on the ground, the party spread out a little, give themselves room.

Cloud gestures at it.

‘By all means, Tifa,’ he says, and she rolls her shoulders.

It’s a sorry state of affairs, an embarrassing battle. For the four arms the mech has, for the guns it carries, it takes little more than five minutes to put it down. Tifa manages to rip one of its arms off with only small assistance from Barret and Cid loosening the joint through a combination of spear-leverage and well-aimed gunfire. Yuffie short-circuits one of the other arms by getting her fingers under the plating and ripping at the wires. Cloud cuts through one of its legs. It’s just. It’s embarrassing for Heidegger and Scarlet.

They’re already making their way along the path towards the mainframe when the mech explodes behind them. Fuck it, Cid thinks, and wonders what Shera would think of it. She wasn’t really into the weaponry, as it went, but she enjoyed the mechanics, the engineering, that went into them. Would she feel it a waste of perfectly good work, to destroy it?

Ultimately, he knows she would think he was doing the right thing, that weapons, whether designed by the planet or not, had no place in society, in their world, and the less of them there were around, the better. But it would still be a shame.

He wonders if she’d ever been approached to join the R&D department, whether Scarlet had tried to poach her, or if Palmer got there first, convincing her to join the rocket.

Fuck sake, he owes Palmer so much, and the little fucker nearly got them all killed. Prick.

‘I intend to go to the top,’ Vincent says, ‘to confront Hojo.’

‘Sure,’ Cloud says, ‘who else is coming?’

Everyone, by the looks of it.

Fuck it, why not?

Hojo is – well. Hojo is madder than usual. It seems like a difficult thing for the bastard to achieve, but the way he hunches over the console, laughing and muttering and crowing to himself – well. He looks sickly, greenish and pale, sweaty and shaking, but his eyes are manic, his body tense with what could be adrenaline.

‘Hojo!’ Cloud yells over the wind, ‘stop right there!’

‘Wha’?’ Hojo slurs, and then turns, his eyes narrowing, disappointed. ‘Oh. It’s the failure.’ His gaze slides across to Vincent. ‘Failure _s_.’

‘I have a name!’ Cloud protests, and Cid abruptly remembers that he is a _child_. ‘It’s Cloud! At least remember it.’

Hojo turns back to the console. ‘Every time I look at you, I am astounded that I was so ignorant. So lacking in scientific sense. What a waste of time you were.’

It isn’t clear who he’s speaking to. Vincent’s fingers curl, squeeze tight into a fist, but he doesn’t draw his gun, not yet.

‘And yet!’ Hojo crows. ‘And yet, here you are! The only success as one of Sephiroth’s clones! I hate myself for my blindness.’

Vincent’s face is cycling through emotions, and though Cid stands ready, knees bent, spear tip angled, he finds it fascinating, completely absorbed in the expressions crossing the other man’s features. Disgust, loathing, pity, fear, loss.

‘Oh, who gives a shit!’ Cloud shouts, and flails his hands about. ‘Just _stop_ it, Hojo!’

‘Stop?’ Hojo repeats. ‘Stop what? This? Planet below, I _couldn’t_! My son needs the power, and I am going to give it to him!’

‘Your son?’ Yuffie asks.

‘Sephiroth,’ Vincent replies, voice calm, though it looks like he wants to be sick.

‘Son?’ Yuffie screeches, ‘that’s Sephiroth’s – that thing _bred_?’

Hojo laughs, and it sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. He steps up into Yuffie’s space, and there’s barely an inch of height between them, his nose close enough to hers that it looks like they’re touching. His breath is putrid, rotten, and Yuffie recoils as much as she can. ‘You are so young. Fresh.’

‘Don’t talk to her,’ Cid snaps, but he’s the other side of the grate and can’t get into his space.

Hojo’s gaze flicks to him, scans him, and then dismisses him. He turns back to the console, steps deceptively doddering.

‘I offered the woman with my child to Professor Gast’s Jenova project,’ Hojo explains, fiddles with the controls. ‘While Sephiroth was in the womb, we implanted the foetus with Jenova cells.’

‘Lucrecia,’ Vincent barks. ‘Her name was Lucrecia Crescent.’

Cid doesn’t know why he only realises it now. He’d heard the name before, of course, because everyone had heard about the tragedy that was Dr Crescent, and Shera had talked, a bit, about the sister she’d never known, but he’d never thought to connect it. But it makes so much sense.

‘Fuck,’ Cid says, and Vincent looks at him, but Hojo starts laughing, and that distracts them both.

‘You see!’ Hojo laughs, crowing like a rooster, ‘it was my desire as a scientist! To be the – to be the _best_! To achieve what no other had achieved! And my son, he – I will not be defeated!’

Cid glances at the others; they look as baffled by the shit coming out of his mouth as he is.

‘I should never have slept,’ Vincent says, which comes out of nowhere, but it’s supported by the gun he unholsters and levels between Hojo’s eyes, ‘it should have been _you_!’

Hojo presses his forehead into the barrel. ‘Oh, but you see, Mr Valentine, she isn’t here to save you this time! Oh no, because you see, you see, I have injected Jenova cells into my body! Do you – let’s see the results!’

Vincent fires at the same time as Hojo pushes, and the shot misses, Vincent sent flying across the grate. Yuffie cries out, but Vincent’s already upright and darting back to his gun.

For a sickly old man, Hojo is pretty adept at dodging a vast majority of their attacks, and it’s a minute before Tifa manages to skid across the floor, sweeping Hojo’s legs out from under him that allows Vincent to get a shot off that connects. Hitting Hojo square in his fucking _face_ , the scientist careens back, clutching at the hole in his cheek. Tifa rights herself, bounces back into line with the others, and they watch as Hojo whirls about the place, a dazed, screeching mess of blood and pus, and then he lurches, heaving and vomiting.

‘But,’ Yuffie says, ‘you shot him in the face.’

‘He has Jenova cells,’ Red says from by her feet, back arched. ‘This is not the end of the battle.’

And it isn’t; with a rip and a tear and an ugly screeching noise, Hojo’s skin tears off his body, coat and hair and bone, and the thing that he becomes is – is –

It’s like the thing they thought after Aerith – after she – after Sephiroth –

It’s no time to think about it now, Cid reasons. There’s a lot already bouncing around his head, and as he ducks and dives underneath Yuffie’s errant spell-casting, and this thing’s attempts to put him to sleep, he finds he doesn’t have room for anything else. He owes Aerith dedicated time to think about her, and in the middle of a battle is not one of them. He hops onto the railing, pushes himself up and off, Jumping up as high as he dare with the crackling of the Mako around them, the electricity pulsing with too much power running through the wires, and he comes down as hard as he can, feet and spear both.

The battle rages, and when they think they’ve got it beat, something slithers out from inside the rotting, stinking mass of writhing flesh that had torn its way out of Hojo’s body, and lingers for a moment. It’s sleek, and smooth, and peculiarly _perfect_ , in some alien, horrible way.

Vincent shoots it point-blank, and it goes down.

A moment passes as it writhes on the floor, and then it goes still, and silence falls. They’re all panting, clutching at ribs and cuts and scrapes and Yuffie leans over the railing to throw up, but they’re intact, conscious.

‘Well,’ Cid says, and kicks the thing on the floor. ‘That’s that, then.’

‘Rest in fucking piss,’ Yuffie spits, wiping her mouth.

Cid doesn’t tell her off about her language.

Cait bounces over to the mainframe. ‘Captain, help me with this, please, you have bigger hands.’

Some quip is halfway to his mouth before he remembers that he’s talking to a robot controlled by a ShinRa executive and not one of his makeshift family back home at Rocket Town, so he swallows it, and follows Reeve’s instructions to power down the cannon.

‘And that’s the end of the cannon,’ Barret says, when the electricity has stopped whirring, and the Mako has begun to wind back down.

‘We’d – what’s next, Cloud?’ Tifa asks.

‘Back to the ship,’ Cloud shrugs. ‘I suppose. We – there’s nothing left for us here.’

* * *

They leave through Sector Five, because that’s a quick way out. There are no troops to stop them, and people are scared, quiet, scurrying past and avoiding their gazes.

‘They need help,’ Red says, as they descend the tower into the slums. ‘Midgar is – ‘

‘ShinRa is finished,’ Cait offers, ‘with Rufus gone, and Heidegger and Scarlet out of action, there’s nobody left.’

‘There’s you,’ Barret says, which is as much of a compliment as if he’d told him he trusted him.

‘I’m urban development,’ Cait says, well – Reeve says. ‘I’m not management, I’m not a president, a leader.’

‘Then learn to be one,’ Cloud says.

Cait goes quiet for a few minutes, bobbing along beside them as they walk through the slums.

They stop at the Church. For a moment, Tifa pauses, and her breath catches.

‘What is it?’ Yuffie asks.

‘I thought I saw – never mind, it doesn’t matter.’

But Cid knows, because he’s seen it too. The flash of pink on your periphery, the soft hum of her voice behind your ear, underneath something else you’re listening to, the warmth of her against your arm. He’s seen it too, but he’s never been in the Church before.

‘This is where we met,’ Cloud explains, ‘Aerith and I, I mean. I crashed through the roof.’

The place is filled with flowers, and it’s beautiful, in a sad sort of way. There are two children sitting by the flowers, fingertips skimming them as they check for any signs of dying or disease, de-heading the ones that need it.

‘She asked us to look after them,’ the girl offers, when Tifa approaches. ‘For when she comes back.’

Tifa’s lip wobbles, but she manages to smile, and smooth a hand over the girl’s crown.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she says, and the girl smiles back, plucks a pink flower from the plot and hands it to Tifa.

Tifa, Cid thinks, as she gets to her feet and turns away from the children to return to them, should go into theatre, because she’s holding her composure, acting the calm and level-headed girl he’s mostly seen her to be, and she’s doing it fantastically, far better than he ever could hope to.

She’ll start crying as soon as they’re out of the Church, but for now, she’s keeping it together.

‘I hope we’re doing you proud,’ Cloud says, to the Church at large, and they all feel the smile coming back to them.

‘We’re not going down without a fight,’ Red says, with a nod. ‘She would be proud of that.’

‘True enough,’ Cloud agrees, and glances at Tifa, his brow furrowed. ‘Come on, we’d better get moving.’

* * *

Back on the airship, hovering listlessly above Midgar, they say nothing for several minutes.

‘Grandfather said we have seven days,’ Red says. ‘Until Meteor falls.’

Cloud looks out of the window and then looks back at them.

‘You want to see him,’ he says, and it’s not a question.

Red nods, and Cloud turns to Barret.

‘You want to see Marlene?’

‘What a stupid fucking question.’

Cloud heaves a breath, and looks at the rest of them.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘we – let’s say we fight Sephiroth, and we win – if we don’t find a way to stop Meteor, to summon Holy, it’s – and if we don’t win, then – well, I guess we die a few days before everyone else.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ Tifa says, quietly, her eyes red.

‘I’m being honest, Tifa,’ Cloud says, and he bites his lip, wrings his hands. ‘Listen, if we’re doing this, I want us all to be sure of why we’re fighting.’

‘We’re saving the Planet,’ Barret says.

‘Saving the Planet, or saving Marlene?’ Cloud asks, and it’s possibly the most astute, wise, most philosophically sensible thing that he has ever said in all the time Cid’s known him.

Barret scratches the back of his head.

‘It doesn’t matter which it is,’ Cloud shrugs, ‘if it’s neither of those things, both, whatever. I don’t really care. I just – if we’re going to fight, we need to know why. We need to know what we’re fighting for, so that we – so that we do it properly.’

‘Properly?’ Yuffie echoes.

‘For me,’ Cloud says, touching his heart, looking contrite for a moment, like he’s going to admit to stealing the last tea bags. ‘For me it’s personal. This is a personal feud with Sephiroth so that I can – I can make good on my past. So that I can put it to bed and move on. Move past what happened to me because of him. It’s just that saving the planet comes along with it. And, deep down, I think we’re all – we’re all doing it for ourselves.’

‘Fuck you on about?’ Cid asks, ‘I couldn’t give a shit.’

Cloud gives him a look. ‘It doesn’t have to be a selfish thing,’ he says, ‘it can be for you, but through doing it for someone that’s important to you. Or something. Whatever.’

‘Someone important?’ Cid repeats, eyebrow raising.

‘Barret’s fighting for Marlene, right? He’s fighting for himself through her. Her happiness, her life, her future, that’s important to him, and he wants to give that to her, and be there to see it. Right?’

‘Fuckin’ right,’ Barret agrees, though he doesn’t really look like he’s following.

‘So it’s for himself. But through her. I think we’re all doing that. One way or another. Saving the planet is personal for each of us. But we need to – we need to know what that is.’

‘You’re talking shit,’ Cid says.

‘No,’ Tifa disagrees, gentle, shaking her head, ‘no, he’s – he’s got a point.’

‘So what?’ Cid asks, ‘you’re asking us to do some soul searching? Find what’s important to us?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m asking,’ Cloud says. ‘As Nanaki said, we’ve got about seven days before Meteor hits. We can spare a night. I want everyone to get off the ship and go to where their – their whatever it is, their someone, or something, or somewhere – go to that reason, and make sure it is the reason they’re fighting, and then. Then come back, if you want. Or don’t. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. I’d want to spend the maybe last days of my life with those that mattered most.’

Tifa looks at him, and Cid kind of wants to throw up a little bit. It’s too saccharine. But his words ring a heavy note in the back of his heart.

Shera. He owes her – an apology, a proper one. An explanation. The truth.

He should tell her that he loves her, and that he’s – that he’s – if the planet ends without saying that to her, he’d never forgive himself, would spend an eternity in the lifestream hating himself for not telling her the truth, after all these fucking years. He’s loved her, in one way or another, since the first time he fucking saw her, and he should have told her years ago, and he could have had – he could have – they could have had so much.

He’s wasted so much fucking time pissing about pretending like he didn’t love her, lying to himself, to her, to everyone around them. He’s done so much shit to her, for her, because of her, and she hasn’t deserved large swathes of it. Fuck sake.

‘I suppose you’ve got a point,’ he admits, grudgingly, because the metal beneath his feet feels like sand being pulled by the tide.

The others look like they’ve been shaken by this, too, frowning at their toecaps and at the walls, and each other.

‘I suppose, then,’ Cid says, after a minute has passed in silence, dragged out by their harrowed expressions, ‘that I’d better drop you all off where you want to be, eh.’

Barret wants to go to Marlene, so he’s the first to be dropped off in Kalm, with a promise to get in touch if he wants to stay or go. Red goes back to Cosmo, and Yuffie to Wutai, her expression resolute. Before she disembarks, she stands toe-to-toe with Cid, her fingers reaching out to curl about his, holding on tight, the way she had in the Forgotten City.

‘Cid,’ she says, and Cid nods.

‘I’ll be here,’ he says, and doesn’t kiss her forehead, even though it feels very much like the thing he should do. ‘Tell him straight.’

She sets her jaw, her eyes, and nods once, hard.

‘I’ll show him how strong I am,’ she says, and gives his fingers a squeeze before bouncing off the ship and nearly giving him a heart attack.

Fucking kids.

Vincent doesn’t know what to do, but Cid reminds him of that cave they’d sailed past, all that time ago, the one that had been calling him, or so Aerith had said.

‘Perhaps that’s where you need to be,’ he says, ‘maybe there’s some answers or something.’

Vincent doesn’t look convinced, and Cid wonders whether, if they all survive this, if they make it out the other side and by some miracle stop Meteor, whether he should reintroduce Shera to him with her full name, or whether that would be too painful. Cid has no idea whether Shera looks like her sister, or enough like her to make the connection, but by all accounts they have very different personalities, so it’s not like it would be meeting a carbon copy. But it would hurt, and he doesn’t know whether to say anything, so in the end he says nothing.

After some thought, Vincent disembarks at the cave, and Cait admits that he’ll just power down, because Reeve is already where he wants to be, after a fashion. Which just leaves Cloud and Tifa.

‘Where am I taking you two, then?’ Cid asks, and looks out towards the setting sun.

‘We don’t have anywhere to go,’ Cloud admits, in the kind of tone that suggests that they’d talked about it. ‘Nibelheim isn’t home any more, and we only really have each other left.’

‘Where are you going?’ Tifa asks.

‘Home,’ Cid says, and looks at her. Her eyes twitch, and then widen.

‘If you – if you set the _Highwind_ down a good distance away,’ she suggests, ‘we can stay with the ship.’

‘Just fucking stay in the inn,’ Cid snorts, ‘Reine won’t mind, she won’t even charge.’

Tifa shakes her head, and looks out over the vista as Cid turns the ship around to head to Rocket Town. He’s booted most of the crew, kicking them back to their families and their homes, and the skeleton crew that remain are all from Rocket Town, so it isn’t like they’re being forced to stay.

‘No, I’d like to see the stars, it’ll be alright. We’re more than strong enough for anything in the plains.’

Cid shakes his head.

‘You’re a fucking lunatic,’ he says, but doesn’t argue further.

* * *

When he sets the ship down, he tells them that he’ll be in touch first thing, so that they can round everyone else up, if they decide to come back, and Cloud nods, and Cid hesitates before disembarking, plodding off the mile or so back to town.

It feels very, very strange being back here, and being back under such – such – under the circumstances that he is.

Knowing that he’s going to talk to Shera, that he’s going to tell her everything, it feels heavy and light all at once. Strange, uncomfortable. New. He isn’t rehearsing what he wants to say, because he never remembers it when he does rehearse, so it’s just a waste of time and energy to pretend like he can.

The town is quiet; no surprise, it’s late, past dinner and approaching bed. The streets are lit more by the light of Meteor than they are anything else, and it gives everything a dull, red gleam, sad and angry at once.

There are lights on across the town, but nobody out in their gardens, nobody on the streets. It’s very unlike Rocket Town; he’s never known anybody to be in their house unless they’re sleeping or sick, and he supposes that this is the effect that Meteor has had on them. Scared them into their houses. With everything that’s been going on, he can’t say he blames them. First ShinRa, and then the launch, and then WEAPON and Meteor and the end of the world. Well, he can’t say he doesn’t want the comfort of his house, too.

Walking up the singular step onto the porch, standing under the eaves for a moment, letting the warm smell of his house wash over him, he wonders how Shera will take this conversation, these revelations, these admissions. She’d shushed him, dismissed the apologies last time. But he doesn’t feel that they were heard, accepted. He needs to tell her, properly.

Fuck it.

The door is unlocked, which is usual enough, he supposes, because they still, after all these years, rarely lock their doors, but the bathroom door is shut, and he can hear her humming to herself. She’s in the bath, then, and he shudders a little, thinks of all the times he’d walked in on her, mostly by accident, saw the length of her legs, the dip of her collar, the pruned fingertips and steam-curled hair. Shit.

He loves her, and everything she is, and fuck him sideways, if he loses her, if he loses his chance at making up for all the time they’ve lost. Fuck!

Very carefully, so as to not make a sound, he closes the door behind him, toes off his boots, hangs up his jacket. He’d left the spear aboard the _Highwind_ , because he won’t need it in town, so he only has his gloves and armlet to remove, the scarf from around his neck. He wonders if maybe he should have been noisy, but he supposes it’s too late for that now, he’s just going to have to startle her. He wanted to surprise her, to just – be here, when she left the bathroom, but knowing how clumsy she can be, knowing how much she’s been through lately, it’s probably a cruel thing to do.

‘Shera!’ he calls, ‘I’m home!’

There’s a gasp, a soft faux-curse, the splash of water.

‘Oh, Captain!’ she exclaims, ‘uh, I’ll be out in a minute, um. Hang on!’

He laughs, pads to the door and raps his knuckles. ‘Stay in there, I can make my own tea. You want one?’

For a moment there’s silence; he imagines she’s scrambled out of the bath, stood dripping on the floor and clutching a towel, not sure whether to wrap it around herself or dry off as quickly as she can. He’s only seen her naked by accident, under circumstances that were very decidedly _not_ romantic nor particularly sexy, but he can’t help but imagine the droplets of water catching on the rise and fall of her creases and joints and curves, little though they are. A rake of a girl, really, but one he loves. Fuck sake.

‘Uh,’ she says, ‘okay. Um. The – the door’s not locked.’

And then he hears the soft slosh of water as she gets back into the bath. As he turns to put the kettle on, he hears her humming to herself again, and for the first time in a really fucking long time, he feels like he’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in piss hojo


	14. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last moment of peace before the final showdown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY.

He covers his eyes when he enters the bathroom, her favourite mug in his other hand. Angling the fingers over his face enough to see the floor, but not her, he approaches and holds the mug out to her. He needn’t have bothered – he never had any other time he’d been in the bathroom with her in the bath – but he feels that perhaps he _should_ bother. These sorts of things, little though they are, matter, and it’s important that she feel – respected? Valued? Not stared at like he wants to – to –

 _Cid_ , he thinks to himself, as her fingers brush his on taking the mug, sending an electric shock the length of his arm, followed quickly by a blaze of fire so hot he’d think she’d thrown the tea on him, _you are a grown man_. There’s no need for him to blush the way that he is, just because some slip of a girl is naked in front of him and he’d very much like to take her to pieces with whatever piece of him she let him use.

He breathes out hard, a little harder than perhaps he should have, if he were unaffected by her, and she laughs, just once, more of a giggle really. Fucking _Planet below_.

‘I’ll, um,’ he starts, hand still over his eyes, free hand now gesturing wildly over his shoulder, ‘I’ll – uh – yeah.’

Cid Highwind is a grown-ass man, thirty-two and very nearly thirty-three, standing taller than a lot of men and broad in the shoulder and broad in the bollocks too, and yet here he fucking is. He hasn’t been skittish around a girl for some twenty years, and he has _never_ been skittish around _this_ girl for as long as he’s known her. He should probably stop calling her a girl, she’s as grown a woman as he is a man, but there’s something just so – so –

Fuck it.

The door bangs shut behind him, and he hears her titter again.

He scrapes his hands over his face and groans into them. Just drink your tea, you fucking coward, and behave yourself.

Shera comes out of the bathroom some half an hour later, and she’s flushed, eyes bright behind her glasses. Her hair’s still in a steam-curled, damp-edged knot atop her head, and her fingertips are pruned when she puts her mug in the sink. He’s not watching her like a hawk, but he can’t take his eyes off of her. She’s wrapped up in a bathrobe, and he’s not sure she’s wearing anything underneath it, and he’s suddenly very fucking glad he’s sat flush to the table and she can’t see his toes curling in his socks against the rug.

 _Stop it_.

Fiddling with her fingers, she opens her mouth, and then closes it again. Looks at him, looks at her feet. Picks at the edge of a nail.

‘I – I didn’t expect you home,’ she says.

‘We need to talk,’ he blurts out, and they both flinch.

‘Oh,’ she says, and colours. ‘Um. I’ll – I’ll just go. Get dressed.’

‘It’s not a bad talk,’ he hurries to say, and feels his cheeks heat.

Since when did he _care_ if she thought she was in trouble? He’d never cared about telling her when she fucked up, and never cared about how she felt when he did so, so why did he care now?

Stupid question, because he knows why, but he has to tell himself something.

‘Okay,’ she nods, and skitters for a moment before scurrying to the door and out, up the stairs, and he can hear her banging about above him, her footfall oddly heavier than normal as she slams and bangs cabinets.

Is she – is she trying to decide what to wear? The thought amuses him, humbles him. He’s never bothered to notice what she wears, not really, not beyond a cursory glance to make sure she’s dressed appropriately for the weather, and to get a sly eyeful of her arse if she happens to be in shorts, but that’s besides the point! The idea that she cares about the impression she’s about to make, that she wants to – he doesn’t know, impress him, make him feel a certain way? It’s hilarious, and sad, and he rubs his face again. He’s so fucking in love with her and he _knows_ this for the truth that it is, that she’d be able to wear a fucking burlap sack and still be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and for _fuck_ sake!

He can almost _hear_ Aerith laughing at him, and if they all die, he will find her in the Lifestream and he’ll kick her fucking arse.

He steps outside to smoke, because it’s something to do with his hands, and it’ll calm his nerves, and it’s better than sitting there staring at the door, waiting for her to come back.

When she comes out to him, he’s sat on the porch step, looking out over the quiet of Rocket Town, cigarette stubbed out between his feet. Barefoot and in her too-long ShinRa-issue pyjama bottoms, she plonks herself down next to him, and knots her fingers in her lap.

‘It’s been pretty decent weather,’ she says, and gestures at Meteor, red and bigger than ever, above them, ‘considering the, you know. Meteor.’

He nods, and picks at a stray thread on his trousers.

‘You, uh,’ she starts, and then falls silent.

‘I just,’ he starts, and then stops.

‘You go,’ they say, at the same time, and both of them chuckle, looking at their feet and rubbing their necks.

Shera looks at him expectantly, and Cid licks his teeth, looks at her, studies her face, and then looks at his feet, takes a deep breath.

‘Talking to that old bastard up at Cosmo,’ he starts, and clears his throat. ‘The old man. Red’s grandpa, however the _fuck_ that works. Fucking weird, the lot of them – whatever! The old timer up at Cosmo, he said that, so he said that Meteor – fuck sake, this is – so we have about a week, before Meteor hits.’

‘A week?’ Shera echoes, and the sadness in her eyes nearly floors him.

No fear, no terror, just sadness.

Cid shrugs.

‘A week, so he said. And Cloud, he – he wants us to be sure, that if we – the barrier around Sephiroth is gone. We can go there right now and kill the fucker. We can fucking destroy that motherfucker, and we can – we can end that part of it. But we need to find a way to stop Meteor. We think that if we – if we can get Sephiroth out of the picture, that Holy has a chance. But Cloud wants us to be sure that if we’re doing that shit, if we’re getting into this fight, that we know what we’re doing. That we’ve got our big almighty reason to fight.’

Shera’s eyebrows wrinkle, but she nods, encouragingly.

‘Barret’s gone back to Marlene, obviously. And everyone’s gone home, or to somewhere they love, to – to – to someone they love.’

His ears are burning, and he chances a glance across at Shera; her cheeks are pink, her gaze in her lap.

‘You came home,’ she says, barely above a breath, almost lost in the breeze.

‘Yeah,’ he breathes back.

For a moment, their gazes meet, and they both flinch, faces heating.

‘Cloud said, if we don’t want to go back, we don’t have to. We can, you know. Stay. And – I dunno – enjoy our last days, maybe. I guess.’

Shera chews her lip, and nods.

‘I understand,’ she says, ‘it can be a scary thing, especially not knowing if you’re going to win.’

He glances at her again; her gaze is off into the middle-distance, her expression indecipherable.

‘You’re going back,’ she says, not a question, not a command, not really anything at all. Just a statement of fact, a truth universally acknowledged.

He nods.

‘I can stay. If you want me to.’

‘I want you to go.’

He breathes deep, in through the nose, out through the mouth. His fingers curl in against his thighs, one by one, extend again.

‘I love you,’ he says, in that same statement of fact tone that she’d used.

For a moment, she doesn’t reply. He doesn’t dare look at her.

‘You,’ she says, and then stops. When she tries again, it’s just, ‘I.’

He says nothing, doesn’t really dare.

‘I – Captain. I – I don’t understand.’

He snorts, and jumps to his feet, paces up and down the path and feels each and every stone beneath his feet, because he’s just in his socks, and he’s going to put holes in them, but _fuck it_. He can’t sit still, not with the heat of her against his arm, the clean citrus smell of her soap in his nose, the softness of her breath in his ear. Fuck _sake_!

‘What’s not to understand?’ he demands, a little harder than he means it to come out of his mouth. ‘The fuck can’t you get? I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since the first fucking time I saw you. I’m going to be in love with you until the day I die, whether that’s in seven days or seven fucking years, or another fuck-knows how many!’

Shera blinks at him, owlish and almost comical. Her eyebrows crease, her mouth downturns, and his stomach drops, his heart quick to follow. She’s going to reject him.

‘Captain,’ she says, too soft, and gets to her feet.

Instinctively, he steps back, knees bent enough to give him lift to jump.

‘I – I didn’t know,’ she says, and the look on her face is breaking his fucking heart.

‘Never fucking said it, did I?’ he snaps. ‘Only just fucking realised it was love!’

‘Only just,’ she echoes, and then draws a breath. ‘Captain, I – didn’t you – didn’t you know that I – Captain, I’ve loved you for – for _years_. Since – I don’t even know _when_ , it just _was_. It was you, it was always you.’

For a moment, the universe stops, as it had in that moment when Barret opened his stupid fucking mouth, and he feels trapped, utterly consumed by the vast gaping emptiness of the universe falling out from beneath him.

‘What?’ he asks, and finds himself powerless to move as she steps into him, toe-to-toe, her bare feet farmer-pale in the darkness settling around them.

Her fingertips find his, gentle against the calluses on his palms, and he’s loose-limbed, loose-willed enough to let her take his hands, hold them in hers. He doesn’t think he’s ever held her hand, not really. Grabbing her hand to pick her up when she falls over or needed a boost on the scaffolding doesn’t count. Just holding her hand and feeling the heat of her skin, the softness of her fingers, the calluses on _her_ palms. Shit.

‘I love you,’ she says, gentle, her eyes bright in the light of Meteor.

He stares at her, and she watches him back. It takes him a second, but he realises that she’s nervous. As though declaring his sentiment returned is somehow something to be nervous about. What is he going to do? Reject her? He already said he’s in love with her, didn’t he? What has she got to be nervous about?

She’s still holding his hands.

He curls his fingers, and she lets go like she’s been burnt. The loss of her skin against his, the warmth, the softness, it sends the universe crashing back into him, a hard landing in a churning ocean.

‘I love you,’ he tells her, again, because he can’t seem to keep it in his mouth.

Her smile is gentle, but it reaches her eyes, sets them alight. His fingers itch, and he, far more tentatively than he thinks he should be, reaches up to touch the soft curls of hair at her temples, brush the strands back, tuck them behind her ears. Her eyelashes flutter, her cheeks flush.

‘I – I can’t kiss you,’ he says, and he couldn’t have shocked her more had he had an electric current.

‘Why not?’

He almost laughs. Shakes his head. Looks at her mouth, and licks his lips, bites down on them hard.

‘I’ve – I’ve tried to live my life with no regrets. I don’t want to die with one.’

She almost looks offended and he does laugh this time, cups her face in both hands, and marvels at the way her jaw fits so perfectly in his palms, her ears fitting between his fingers. The ring through the shell of one of her ears, such an errant and bizarre thing that he’d never really paid any attention to before, it brushes against his fingertip, and he strokes the line of it once before settling his fingers.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ he assures her, and her eyelids flutter, close, and he can count her eyelashes. ‘Because I do. Fuck me, I want to so badly. But I – I wouldn’t be – I couldn’t stop, at just a kiss. And I don’t want it to be – it’s not the right time, or place, and I – so I can’t kiss you, you get it? I don’t want this to be the only – I’d rather not know at all. Than to know and leave you here and never – _I love you_.’

The last comes out as a laugh, breathless, giddy.

The weight it takes off of him, years and years and years of – of – self-loathing, and hatred, and yearning, and lying to himself, so much just. Gone.

Just like that.

For a few long, impossible moments, they stand there and watch each other, and then Shera’s fingertips curl around his wrists, press soft to his pulse, and he lets her pull his hands down, hold him steady for a second. Then she huffs out a breath that ruffles her hair and slips between his arms, hers wrapped tight around his waist. Fuck him if it doesn’t feel like the most perfect, meant-to-be, pre-destined fucking thing he’s ever felt. Like most things where she’s concerned, he’s never really hugged her. Draping themselves over each other for support when drunk, or injured, or asleep, that doesn’t count, and the embrace they’d shared when the first rocket made it, that doesn’t count, either. This is just. A hug. Pure and simple.

It’s a hug, and he likes the feel of her in his arms, and he buries his face in her neck, spreads his fingers to feel the heat of her back, the dip of her waist, which isn’t really a dip at all, but it’s there, and he can feel it, and he can _feel her_ against him, and _shit_.

Her breath is hot against his neck. She might be crying. He doesn’t mention it.

* * *

When they finally manage to peel away from each other, aware that they’re outside, in the middle of the night, and there’s what’s waiting for him on the morrow, she insists he come inside, and tries to insist he go to bed.

‘No,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘no, I have – I have a lot of things I need to say.’

Her ears flush, but she smiles and shakes her head in turn. ‘You’ve said the only thing that really matters,’ she assures him.

His turn to blush, and he’s glad nobody’s around to see it, because he’s not sure he’s ever _stopped_ blushing, and he’s thirty-fucking-two!

‘Shera,’ he says, ‘listen. I need to say that I’m sorry, and I need you to fucking listen to it. The way that I was – I was fucking horrible to you. And you can deny it, and you can make excuses for it, but I was horrible. I was horrible, and I was selfish, and I took so much of my anger out on you, when it was _never_ you I was angry with. I was angry at myself, and I was angry at ShinRa, and I was angry about so many fucking things, but it was _never_ you.’

‘I know,’ she says, and he _knows_ that.

‘I _know that_ ,’ he tells her. ‘You know me better than I fucking know myself! But I _have_ to say it! Fuck sake, Shera, I – I ain’t good with this shit. I don’t know how to apologise, or how to love you, or how to – fuck, I don’t know this emotional shit!’

She laughs, and touches his face, strokes the stubble on his jaw. His eyes fall shut, and he turns into the touch, feels the pad of her fingertip against his lip.

‘You’re doing fine,’ she assures him, and the trace of her finger against his cupid’s bow sends fire across his skin, a sharp jolt to his brain and his –

‘I want to do better,’ he breathes.

His lips catch against her finger, and his breath shudders.

He thinks she laughs.

‘You’ll do better,’ she says. ‘You’re a good man, Captain. You’ve always been a good man.’

‘I’ve made you cry.’

He feels her breath against his mouth and almost flinches, but then her nose touches his, her forehead.

‘I cry easily,’ she says. ‘You were hurting.’

‘That’s no excuse.’

Her breath smells of tea and her skin of citrus and his fingers curl desperately at his sides, knuckles against the skin.

‘I was rude about Isak,’ he tries next, and she laughs, shuddering against him.

‘Isak,’ she echoes, and shakes her head. ‘Captain, I’d tried to – I didn’t know what to do, and you weren’t – you didn’t seem interested – and Isak was nice. But he wasn’t you. And it never went further than that dinner. You – ’

‘I was fucking _vile_ to you about that,’ he says, ‘I said some things I fucking regret. Absolutely fucking disgusting, but I said it. I’m sorry.’

They’d never talked about it. She’d come back after a week, because of course she did, she was always coming back, and he’d known it in his gut that she wouldn’t be gone forever. But he’d been stewing in it for a week, and when she’d come back, acting like he didn’t exist, he’d been just as wretched about it as he had when he made her leave, and then she’d rounded on him, and that backbone had been so – so – fuck he’d wanted her so badly that he couldn’t breathe for it. Seeing a little bit of fire in her, he hadn’t known it was a turn-on, but it had been, and she’d said her piece, and he’d kept his trap shut, and that was the end of that, they’d not said anything else afterwards. Just gone back to normal, pretending like it hadn’t happened.

‘We talked it over,’ she says, which is kind of her, considering that is very much what they _didn’t_ do.

‘Shera,’ he sighs.

‘Captain,’ she replies.

He opens his eyes, finds hers shut, and watches her for a moment, blurred with the closeness.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he whispers, and it’s not a lie, but it’s not true.

He wants to go, knows he has to go. But he could stay here, in her arms, with her, he could live out the rest of his life, he could only have a few days left, and he could have her, make up for the time they lost.

‘You’re going,’ she says. ‘But you’re not going yet.’

‘Not yet,’ he repeats.

Her nose rubs his, and then she pulls away, just enough that he feels her loss like a limb.

‘You need to rest,’ she says, ‘you’ve got a big day tomorrow.’

It all feels so incomplete, so many things they haven’t said, but her expression is one of no argument, and he doesn’t know what to say to her now anyway.

‘It’ll be an early start,’ he says, sighs.

‘Then you’d best get to bed.’

He can’t help himself.

He says, ‘are you joining me?’

Her laughter is the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard, and it carries him up the stairs and to bed.

* * *

The morning dawns warmer than he’s used to. It’s not _actually_ warmer, it’s as cold as every other morning, but he finds himself buoyed by the weight off his shoulders, and the warmth of knowing, once and for fucking all, that he’s in love, and that love is returned. What the living fuck he did to deserve that, he doesn’t know, but he did, and he’s not one to look a chocobo in the beak.

He grabs his trousers, clean socks from the drawer, and for a moment hesitates, doubled over at the dresser and staring at himself in the mirror atop it. His hair is a mess, his stubble unruly, and his dark circles are worse for having lain in bed most of the hours he’d been in it, staring at the ceiling and grinning to himself. Fuck sake.

‘You’re a grown man,’ he tells himself, and ruffles his hair, trying to get some semblance of order to it.

Really, it needs cutting, too long on the top and only held in any sort of place by his goggles, but whatever, he could be dead soon, who cares about his hair? Not him, that’s for fucking sure, and there’s some traitorous little part of him, deep in his gut, that thinks he should probably keep the length, even if it’s beginning to curl like his mother’s does, just because he thinks Shera might like to hold onto it.

But that thought, and all the thoughts that accompany such a rush of heat in his blood, are thoughts for a time where he’s not looking at his death in the face, and he so he puts them aside, in a neat little box in the back of his brain.

Heading downstairs with a shake of his shoulders to right himself, he finds Shera in the kitchen, spoon in her mouth as she potters back and forth at the stove. The kettle is just beginning to steam, and she’s humming to herself, getting down mugs and the tea caddy and she’s –

She’s –

Fuck him, he loves her.

‘Good morning,’ he says, and she nearly swallows the spoon.

‘Captain!’ she exclaims, when she’s done coughing up stainless steel.

He tries not to laugh, but he can’t stop the grin, and he comes to take her waist, so straight and soft, in his hands, pull her close. Her nose obligingly comes to rest against his, tilting to let her forehead bump, and he grins, feels the warmth of her breath against his face.

‘Good morning,’ she whispers, and he huffs out a contented breath.

His fingers trace the shape of her waist, her hips, run along the waistband of her trousers, and he tries not to flush at the way she shivers at his fingertips on her skin. He doesn’t know if she’s ticklish. He wants to know.

‘Did you sleep okay?’ she asks, but her breath is uneven, and the words shudder.

‘Yeah,’ he nods, enjoying the brush of her nose. ‘You?’

He can feel her gaping at him, her eyelashes against his cheeks as they flutter, and her breath catches. His fingertips ease under her t-shirt, rest against her skin firm and tender both, and her weight shifts; her toes are curling. Her fingers come to clutch at his t-shirt in turn, holding onto him and holding him close.

‘Yes,’ she breathes, belatedly.

The kettle starts whistling and they leap apart. Shera’s face is red, Cid’s feels hot.

‘I, uh,’ he says, and backs away, picks up the clothes he’d dropped on the table. ‘I need to – won’t be five minutes.’

He gestures hopelessly at the bathroom, and Shera nods quickly, whirls around to take the kettle off the hob.

‘Take your time,’ she says, ‘it’s early.’

But it’s not early enough. He showers and shaves and stares at his reflection for a moment. This could be the last time he sees her. He should kiss her. Even if he has to chain himself to a fucking wall so that he doesn’t go further than that, he should kiss her. He should.

She deserves that. He deserves that.

What if he does die, though, and then Cloud manages to find a way to boost Holy? To save the world? What if he dies and she lives and then she’s got to live with the maybe of what they could have had? No, no, better to have nothing at all than to have an almost.

Okay. Fuck.

There’s tea and breakfast waiting for him when he finally finds the balls to get out of the bathroom, and she’s sat looking out of the window, tea cradled in her hands and _fuck_ , it nearly takes him off his feet.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he tells her, and she flinches, looks at him, her cheeks pink.

‘Oh, hush,’ she says, shaking her head. A strand of hair drops across her brow, brushes her nose. He has never envied a strand of hair before in his _life_.

‘I mean it,’ he tells her, and comes to sit at the table, stretching his legs out to rest his feet against her ankles. ‘You’re beautiful. I always thought so. Fuck sake, four-eyes, I nearly fell off that fucking scaffolding when you walked away the day you rocked up.’

She laughs, and brushes her foot against his ankle. It’s so natural, so _right_. He cannot _believe_ that they’ve wasted so much time. He looks at her mouth, her lips plush and pink and so fucking kissable, the dimples in her cheeks where her smile reaches the edges of her eyes.

‘Captain,’ she says, and he’s so fucking glad she doesn’t use his name, because he feels like he’s on a trigger, like he wouldn’t be able to _think_ if she used it.

‘Yes,’ he replies, and she just laughs again.

‘Eat your breakfast, I’m sure your PHS will start ringing soon. Everyone will come back.’

He looks at her, the way the sun and the red light of Meteor flashes in her eyes, the softness of the flush in her cheeks, and he wonders if they will.

* * *

He’s got a mouthful of the last of his toast when the PHS first rings. It’s Barret.

‘Yo, man, when you coming to get me?’ he demands, as soon as Cid’s answered the call.

Cid replies without swallowing. ‘Let me eat, fuck sake.’

Shera tuts at him and takes his plate. He can feel the hunger in his expression when he looks at her. She flushes, and dithers, and whirls on her heel.

Barret laughs, and tells him to let him know when he’s on the way, and hangs up.

Cid hasn’t even put the PHS down when it rings again. Yuffie this time, demanding to know when he’s coming, or if it would be quicker for her to go to Cosmo to join up with Red and Vincent, who had apparently made his way there during the night, the fucking lunatic. Cid tells her to wait, that he’ll be there as soon as he can.

‘Fuck sake,’ he says, when he hangs up and stares at the device. ‘They’re all coming back.’

Shera, washing the dishes, chuckles.

‘I did say, Captain,’ she tells him, gentle, ‘you’ve been in this together from the beginning. Nobody’s going to leave now.’

‘I suppose not,’ he agrees, leans back in his chair to frown, rubs his neck with both hands, digs his fingers into the bones. ‘It feels. Very not real.’

She pauses, looks over her shoulder at him, up to her elbows in suds, and he watches her eyes track the length of him, flicker over his face.

‘Are you rested?’ she asks, ‘I don’t have a Restore materia, but I – ‘

‘I’m fine,’ he assures her, and shoves up from the table.

The PHS rings, and he ignores it.

She watches him, eyes wide, and he comes to stand close to her, toe-to-toe, hands caging her in against the sink.

‘Captain?’

‘Listen,’ he breathes, and tries to commit her face to memory. ‘Listen, if I – I don’t know what’s going to happen, I don’t know if we’re going to – fuck me, I don’t know if we’re going to make it. Against that motherfucker, or if we’re gonna stop Meteor, or – I don’t know. But listen, Shera, you need to know. I love you.’

Her smile comes shaky and unsure, but there. She nods, and her hands are wet when they touch his.

‘I love you,’ she repeats.

They stare at each other for a minute, and then he jolts back, struck by the lightning realisation of how long he’s been lingering.

‘I need to go,’ he says and hates the look on her face.

‘Yes,’ she nods. ‘I suppose so, yes. Um. Please be safe.’

He smiles, just for a heartbeat, barely a twitch of his lips.

‘As safe as I ever am,’ he assures her, and goes to pull his boots on.

She hovers at the doorway as he shrugs into his jacket, and wrings her hands.

‘Come home?’ she says, and it comes out as a question.

He cups her face in both hands, thumbs rubbing across her cheeks, and if they’re a little wet, well, he’s not going to say anything.

‘To you,’ he agrees, and pulls her closer to press a kiss to her forehead.

Fists squeezed tight against his sides, he doesn’t dare look back to her as he leaves the house, the town, the last vestiges of peace.

The final fight, he realises, as the _Highwind_ comes back into view, and Tifa and Cloud beneath it, looking uncomfortable but too close, it’s going to begin.

No turning back now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hallelujah


	15. Holy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle is won, but at what cost?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good golly, it's not until you look at the ending that you realise what an absolute mess it is.
> 
> Home stretch y'all!
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

It starts before they’re even airborne. He’d picked up Yuffie, who’d been on his ass every moment since, and then swung back to pick up Red and Vincent, and then over the mountains they went to go and fetch Barret. And it’s while they’re fetching Barret that the shit starts, the in-fighting, the bickering.

Cid, still kind of reeling from the previous night, and the way Shera had looked at him as he left, the way she’d searched his eyes for something that he hopes to _fuck_ she found, the way he’d searched hers in turn, knowing he was looking for validation, for love, for her heart, and the way he’d only fucking _found it_ – well, he has no time to listen to the fuckers complaining and whining and bickering. So he doesn’t. He looks at the radar, and the skyline ahead of them, and he takes a drag of his cigarette. Yuffie comes to collapse under the console, the filthy toecaps of her boots pressing against his. He taps his heel, lets her know he knows she’s there and that it’s okay, but that if she throws up on him he _will_ throw her overboard. Amazing what you can tell someone with a foot-tap, really. He’s very impressed that she picks it up and gurgles to herself, face pressed into the shade-cool metal of the console.

Meteor looks closer than ever, filling the horizon the closer to the crater he flies them, and a hush begins to fall over them as they hit – they cross the snow, Icicle Inn and Deist, and he should have gone home. His mother will be fucking _furious_ , but he supposes it’s too late now. She can find him in the Lifestream, because fuck knows his father will tan his hide the moment he’s dead. They’ll probably be too busy arguing over how to discipline their grown son to actually have an argument with him. Good, he supposes, as the crater draws level, and he glances back at Cloud for confirmation to drop them. Good, he’ll be too busy looking for Shera to stick around to see whether he’s going to get a belt to his legs.

‘Okay,’ Cloud says, a little more quietly than you’d have expected from a leader. ‘Okay, are we ready?’

No, the answer is of course they fucking aren’t. But Cid hits the buttons, pulls the lever, and he misses driving. It’s out of nowhere, but he misses the car, he misses checking the wing mirrors, and throwing his arm over the passenger head rest to reverse. He misses being able to card his fingers through the ends of Shera’s ponytail as he does. Ana had told him once, in that way Ana drops profound moments of revelation on him at the oddest of moments, that a J-turn was the sexiest thing a man could do in a car, so naturally the moment that winter’s snow hit, Cid took Shera shopping and gave it a go.

The memory of her expression, eyes so wide, but ears pink and fingers tight in her coat hem, makes him huff out a laugh. As he looks at the swirling mists and angry plumes of Lifestream curling above their heads as they disembark, he figures he’ll hold onto it; it’ll be the last laugh for a while.

There are items scattered, bodies. They aren’t the first to try and get into the Crater, that much is obvious. Yuffie’s fingers slip into his, and he squeezes once.

‘Right,’ Cloud says with a nod and a desperate twist of his hands, once they’ve descended through monsters and winding paths and the natural light’s gone from over their heads, leaving them with only the dripping darkness of a cave, the greenish-blue tint of the Lifestream swelling up the walls and pooling beneath their feet.

It’s quiet, all of a sudden; no monsters, no dripping or ticking or creaking and cracking and groaning. Just the eight of them, stood there and staring at the walls, breathing deep. Cid drags his spearpoint through the dirt, draws idle shapes. The old man, the one who’d been so desperate to see the rocket launch, who’d stood and stared at it every day, he’d caught up to Cid as he’d left, thrust a spear into his hands. Russ had gotten hold of it from fuck only knows where, and he’d hid it from Artyom, because of course he hid it from the weapons’ dealer, but the old man had wanted Cid to take it with him. If it was going to be the final fight, so he’d said, then Cid needed to be prepared. The spear is graceful, elegant, purple and gold and weighted perfectly in his palm. He’s reminded a little of Deist, of the ceremonial spear his father had mounted above the fireplace in the hall, a weapon older than Cid could imagine, when he’d been young enough to imagine anything at all, and he doesn’t know whether it was ever used. Blood on the end of the spear clings to the dirt, and he scrapes it off with the side of his boot. Yuffie, next to him, fidgeting, Materia popping in and out of the brace of her shuriken. Tifa, gloves creaking as she cracks her knuckles and stretches her fingers, scuffs her boots. Vincent, on the edge of the group, checking and rechecking the chamber of his gun, eyes flitting across the darkness above their heads, as if expecting it to come crashing down. Barret, hand shoved in his pocket, where Cid knows there is a worn-out photo of Marlene, creased and dog-eared. Red, pacing about their shins, tail flicking. Cait, still and silent, the whir of his electronics the only sound.

‘Right,’ Cloud says again, ‘we’ll – this is a warren, we need – to split up. Two teams, take alternate paths.’

It seems a bad idea, but what has anything they’ve ever done been anything else? Cid takes Yuffie with him, because Yuffie’s not letting go of his hand, and they pick their way through the rocks. Partway along, they separate from Cloud and Tifa, who go down into a glowing, pulsating mass of light, and pick their way through a tunnel into a chamber.

‘Listen,’ Cid says as they part ways, Yuffie already halfway through the tunnel, shuriken clinking on the walls, and Cloud looks back at him. ‘Sephiroth’s going to be shitting himself. He knows we’re coming, and I’d be fuckin’ terrified, if I had you comin’ to kill me.’

‘Ha,’ Yuffie crows from behind the wall, ‘I’d have bailed by now if I knew this was happening!’

Less comforting than she probably thinks it is, Cid thinks with a jerk of his chin to the others, turning to follow the little brat.

‘Say, old man,’ Yuffie says, as he braces his knees and laces his fingers to boost her up onto an outcropping of rock where something shiny dangles.

‘We having this conversation now?’ he asks, grunting as she dumps the full weight of her skinny little ass into his palms, boot scraping his skin. ‘One, two, up you go.’

He boosts her with little effort, and she catches the rock with one hand, steadies herself to pat around and get the shiny thing.

‘I suppose so,’ she says, and then, cheerfully, ‘I kicked Godo’s ass.’

‘Good,’ Cid grunts, and obligingly shuffles a few inches to the side so she can get more stretch on her arm. ‘What you get for that? Praise?’

She snorts. ‘No. Well. Kind of. He said I was better than him. So that’s something. And I earned the Leviathan Materia.’

Cid hums, and she gives a little cry of success as she snags the item before lowering her weight without any warning. She’s lucky he was expecting her to be a dickhead, bends his knees to accommodate her shift in weight, and she hops back to the ground. It’s nothing spectacular, just an Imperial Guard, but it’s better than what she currently has about her wrist, so he tells her to put it on.

‘Leviathan’s your – your thing, isn’t it? In Wutai. Your guardian, or whatever.’

She nods, and he’s almost impressed at the way she balances her Materia across the back of her fingers as she swaps out the armour. ‘Uh-huh. She’s been sleeping for a long time now, so I – I hope she wakes up in time.’

‘Why wouldn’t she wake up?’ Cid asks. ‘She’s got the strongest ninja in all of Wutai giving her commands, she can’t ignore that.’

Yuffie hesitates for a second; her ears go pink beneath the rough cut of her hair, and she shoves the last of her materia in without consideration, marching past him.

‘Come on, we’d better get a move on, ‘fore they find Sephiroth without us.’

They walk in silence for a few moments more, and then Cid says, ‘I’m proud of you.’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ she replies, but it’s choked.

They don’t say anything else until they’ve come out the other end of the tunnel, where Barret is loudly demanding that they get a move on.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Tifa exclaims. ‘I thought something had happened to you!’

‘Oh, behave,’ Cid snorts, ‘you don’t need to worry about us, this one’s hard as nails now.’

Yuffie glances at him, but doesn’t argue.

‘Besides,’ he adds, ‘I can’t let you go by yourselves, I’ll just worry about you.’

Tifa coos, as sarcastic as she dares, her hands framing her chin. ‘Oh, Cid, I didn’t know you cared!’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he scoffs.

Cloud resolutely ignores them, and goes to the edge of the platform they’ve congregated on.

‘So this is it,’ he says, looking down the jutting rocks forming something like a path descending deeper into the crater.

The Lifestream is bubbling more here, an audible little hum of energy echoing behind all of their ears. Not one of them will say it, won’t open their mouths, but they can all hear the soft cadence of Aerith’s voice in there, the up and down of that song she’d hum all the fucking time, just beneath the crackle of energy. You have to _listen_ to hear it, but not a single one of them can listen hard enough, but they all know it’s there, they can all hear it.

‘So this is it,’ Tifa echoes.

‘Well, then, I guess,’ Cloud hedges, wringing his hands some more. ‘Let’s mosey, then.’

Cid buries his face in his hands, scrubs harder than when he’s trying to get engine oil off.

‘Fucking murder me,’ he breathes, and then, louder, ‘just say something more – just tell us to move out, fuck sake. Mosey, fucking Planet swallow me.’

Cloud blinks, and then squares his shoulders.

‘Move out,’ he echoes, in a voice that feels much bigger than the chest it comes from. ‘And – listen, if you want to go back, I – I don’t blame you.’

‘I am going to push you down those fucking steps, I swear,’ Barret huffs, and comes stomping down to shove past the boy.

Cloud rushes to follow him. Tifa goes to follow, but before she gets onto the first step, a horrible, ear-splitting screeching tears through the stale, lingering air around them and nearly drives them to their knees.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Yuffie demands.

‘Watch your mouth!’ Cid snaps back, not even really aware he’s saying it.

‘Cid!’ Vincent calls, and they whirl to where the gunman is aiming, and then firing.

‘Oh, _Planet_ ,’ Tifa breathes, and Cid shoves at her.

‘Go,’ he barks, knees bending to jump, ‘we’ve got this.’

And they do, he realises, as he springs and spears the first of the _things_ swarming like those fucking microscopic little biting bugs that had plagued the launch area since they first got there, making the summers a living nightmare. They’ve got this. Vincent makes a not-too-human noise as Yuffie backflips off the wall above Cid’s head just as he hits the ground again, and Cid whirls to see Vincent disappear in a skin-tearing cloud of smoke, replaced by – by –

‘What the fuck is that?’ he pleads, because the other three weren’t enough.

He doesn’t get much time to contemplate it, or watch it, or even really look at it, besides to acknowledge that’s it black and bloody and the wings snapping behind it to give it lift are almost too big to be logical, because a creature tries to slam his head into the floor, and it’s only Red snapping at its ankles that gives him the second he needs to roll out of the way.

Yuffie crashes next to him as the thing-that-was-Vincent slams a creature into the wall hard enough to crack the stone behind it.

‘What is that?’ she asks, and Cid shakes his head.

‘I don’t fucking know,’ he admits, and slams his heel into the face of a gargoyle trying to get close enough to grab at Yuffie’s shin. ‘But I’m not getting in its way.’

The battle goes on –

And on –

The-thing-that-was-Vincent flaps about, tearing the creatures apart and slamming them into the ground and it finds something sharp and pointy and that’s a whole new fucking problem, but Cid looks at Yuffie, who looks at him, and they look at Red and Cait, who are doing their best to not get in its way, and they try to catch their breath.

The bodies are piling up, and just as suddenly as they’d arrived –

They stop.

The screeching stops, and the influx of creatures coming from every gap in the walls ceases, and that’s it. It’s over.

The-thing-that-was-Vincent flaps once, twice, crashes into the ground. It stands there and stares at them. And then it, too, is gone, and Vincent is a staggering, sweaty mess reappearing out of nothingness. Yuffie rushes to catch him, but he’s heavier than he looks, and she buckles under the weight. Cid lurches across to help her, and between them, they get him upright.

‘Chaos,’ Vincent breathes, and his breath smells of sulphur.

‘Chaos?’ Cid echoes, but doesn’t get any more explanation.

They sit him down against a rock, and Yuffie goes off to kick a few of the monster corpses, see if they drop anything useful.

‘What do we do?’ Red asks, coming and plonking himself down with a huff or breath next to Cid’s squatting ankle.

Cid scratches behind the cat’s ears as he watches Vincent try to catch his breath.

‘We go after them,’ he says after a moment, slow and careful.

‘Cloud?’ Red asks, and his back foot thumps in time to Cid’s fingers.

‘Yeah. Yeah. They’re going to need all the help they can get, and besides. I want to give that fucker something to think about.’

‘Cloud?’ Red repeats, frowning.

Cid stops scratching his ears.

‘No, no, Sephiroth. Fucker’s clearly never had a beating from his father in his life.’

Vincent scrapes his hair from his face, peers up at Cid through half-open eyes.

‘His father was very hands-off.’

‘Should have been hands-on,’ Cid grunts, and gets to his feet. He tries to touch his toes as he straightens his legs, but he doesn’t quite manage it. Fuck it. ‘You up for another round?’

Vincent shudders, and accepts the hand Cid extends to him.

‘Yes,’ he says, with a resolute nod. ‘Yes, I think so. Sephiroth is – I have slept long enough, and it is time to start living.’

Cid’s lips twitch a little. ‘Remind me to take you to see Shera,’ he says, ‘if we make it through this.’

Yuffie snorts and comes springing over to them with some Phoenix Downs clutched in her hand. ‘Don’t say it like you don’t believe it!’ she says, and shoves the feathers at him. ‘Here, you look after them, I don’t have space in my pockets.’

‘Oh, and I do?’ Cid snorts, but shoves them into one of his jacket pockets anyway. As he does, his fingers brush something he doesn’t immediately recognise.

As the only one who touches his jacket, he can’t imagine there being something he doesn’t recognise in there, so he draws it out, and finds a folded scrap of paper. He frowns; it’s only small, and he can see the edge of the _Shanghai_ ’s logo in the corner of one of the folds. So it’s been torn off the jotter on the desk at the inn, and he frowns some more at it.

Yuffie coos at it but doesn’t try to snatch it from him. ‘A love note!’ she crows, ‘Cid’s got a _girlfriend_!’ As she says it, her entire body locks, the thought so visibly jarring it shuts her joints down. ‘Wait – you – you – did you tell – _Cid_!’

He makes a face, all wide eyes and disparaging curiosity. ‘What?’ he crows back, and turns his gaze back to the paper.

‘Did you – you told her!’

‘Fuck off.’

He unfolds the note, and it’s Shera’s handwriting, her familiar too-long loops and too-small everything-else, slightly off-centre despite the lines.

_Come Home._

_I love you._

He takes a breath, two, licks his lips. Clears his throat.

‘Alright,’ he says, and tucks the note into his inside pocket, the one that’s so small he’s never bothered to put anything in it because you can’t get anything useful in there.

But it puts it right next to his heart, which is the only place it should really be.

‘Alright?’ Cait asks.

‘We’d better get down there before they get themselves killed. Or more of those monsters show their ugly faces.’

They make it down the platforms in time to see Cloud, Barret and Tifa at their wits end trying to fight a – a –

‘What is _that_?’ Yuffie asks, and almost sends them crashing over the side of a platform when she abruptly stops at the back edge of the next platform.

‘Fucking move, that’s what it is,’ Cid grunts, and shoves at her so he can get his heels on the rock.

She takes the rest of the platform at a two-step sprint and leaps across the gap with a screech that gets Tifa slapped in the face by a tentacle when she whips her gaze around to look.

‘Yuffie!’ she exclaims, and the thing screeches as the shuriken connects.

‘We’re here!’ the kid crows and Vincent tosses a Cure3 Tifa’s way as they make their way down to join the fray.

‘It’s one of those Jenova monsters,’ Barret offers as Cid hops down next to him, taking a moment, in the way that Cid has, to light a cigarette. ‘Is now the fucking time?’

‘Fought enough of these fuckers,’ Cid offers, taking a deep drag. ‘Piece of cake at this point, eh?’

Jenova tries to whip him with a tenacle, but he jumps out of the way, and gets a good stab of his spear into one of the purple, pus-filled _somethings_ protruding from its body.

With back-up, the fight is over soon enough. The creature shudders, begins to deflate, and slips off the of platform, and it makes no noise. The Lifestream below swallows it, and the light dims for a moment before coming back brighter than ever. Still, that same humming they’d been able to hear, though Aerith’s hum is louder now, at least to Cid’s ears.

He lights another cigarette, stares at the green of the Lifestream until his eyes hurt.

‘Where do we go now?’ Red asks, ‘I cannot see a way forward.’

Tifa shakes her head, and opens her mouth, but no words come, just a cry of surprise as the ground beneath them shakes, begins to fall away. Before they can move, get to safer ground, the ground is completely gone, and they’re weightless, supported by the – Cid supposes, as the light grows bright enough to be blinding – Lifestream as they descend deeper, deeper. They all yell expletives at each other, in one form or another, and cover their eyes as they fall into darkness.

* * *

The dull throb of a heartbeat, echoing around the inside of his skull. No, no, it’s not his heartbeat, it’s not in his head, it’s outside his body, it’s something else. With a groan, and a clutch at his head, he tries to roll over, can’t seem to find the strength.

‘Oh!’ Tifa’s voice, somewhere close and far away at once. ‘Oh, good, we’re – we’re all here.’

Cid manages to open his eyes in time to get yanked by a force he can’t see, up, up into the nothingness around them, and there, before them, surrounded by light – Sephiroth.

‘Motherfucker!’ he yells, and tries to swing, but he can’t. ‘I can’t move!

‘Is this it?’ Barret yells back as they’re all visible struck by something not one of them could see. He coughs, splutters; blood. ‘Is this his true power?’

Cid tries to get his breath but can’t seem to. Every inhale feels empty, his lungs working but not getting anywhere, and he feels woozy, sick.

Red howls, pained, writhes in place despite nothing being there to hold him.

‘Make it stop,’ he begs, ‘my tail, I – it’s like I’m being torn in two.’

‘I can’t help!’ Reeve cries, his voice breaking through Cait’s programmed one, ‘I’m trying, but everything’s – he’s in the circuits!’

‘He’s too strong!’ Yuffie sobs, ‘he’s too strong.’

Cid looks across to her, the dirty bruises across her joints and the gash on her cheek, new by the throb of blood. His fist tries to clench, but he can’t move. The kid’s too fucking young. They’re all too fucking young.

‘Holy,’ Cloud chokes out, and he points, shaking, barely there.

Light, behind Sephiroth, white and pure and glowing brighter every second.

‘It’s Holy,’ Cloud repeats, louder. ‘It’s Holy, Aerith’s prayer – it – it _worked_. We have a _chance_! Sephiroth! It’s done! It’s over!’

Sephiroth laughs, throws an arm, and someone manages to cast a Barrier, fuck knows who, and fuck knows how, but it’s up in time and shatters at the force of the blow Sephiroth shoots at them. Spiralling through space, they crash, individually, onto platforms. Breathless, Cid jerks to his feet, wipes the blood from his split lip, and finds himself looking at – at – he doesn’t know what he’s looking at, but it’s certainly something.

‘The fuck is that!’ Barret hollers, and Cid waves his spear.

‘I don’t fucking know! Hit it!’ he yells back.

Barret, because he is not an idiot, does as he’s told, and braces his legs to start firing. Cloud and Tifa are wedged in the middle of the monster, and they’re unable to get close; Tifa’s blows are coming up against some kind of barrier, and Cloud’s sword is being physically rejected by thin air, as if he’s striking a rubber ball.

Cid licks his lips, looks across to Red, next to him. Yuffie, Vincent and Cait are on the far side of Cloud and Tifa, and Vincent is taking contemplative pot shots at the monster.

‘Okay, think,’ Cid says to himself. He wipes his nose, blood streaking up his arm, and he blinks away wooziness.

Cloud and Tifa keep trying to attack the core but every attack gets blocked. This thing – some part of Sephiroth, he supposes, the way that those things were parts of Jenova – seems to be attacking mostly with magic, casting high level shit that takes them off their feet. They’re spending more time tossing healing items and spells at each other, and the barriers they’re tossing up aren’t lasting long at all, destroyed by the magic before it’s even really established.

‘If it’s attacking with magic it’s blocking with magic,’ Cid says, mostly to himself, and then he looks at Barret, at Red.

‘The arms – wings – fucking destroy ‘em!’

He yells it to Cloud, who can’t do a lot from where he’s currently being pummelled by a rock, but he does yell it across to the other group, and Vincent waves his gun before unleashing a barrage of bullets on the wing-arm-whatever on their side.

‘Fucking creepy little fucker up top,’ Barret offers, as Cid goes around him to get a better jumping-off point to attack.

‘I’m trying not to look at it,’ Cid replies, and leaps up to stab it.

The wing gives underneath him, withering away, and he nearly falls into the nothingness before he gets his footing to jump back.

‘Cloud, Tifa, now!’ he yells, and they give it their all.

The blast that comes off the monster as they finally slay it is five times as hard hitting as whatever the Sephiroth they’d first seen had done, and Cid wonders if his ribs are broken.

‘Fucking hell,’ he chokes, and tastes blood.

By the time he looks up again, there’s another Sephiroth. This one is the opposite end of monstruous to whatever the thing they just fought was.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he asks, but Barret has nothing to say.

He looks across at him, and he’s out cold. So too is Red on his other side, but not dead. Neither of them are dead. He coughs, splutters, wipes his mouth.

Cloud and Tifa are picking themselves up, as are Vincent and Yuffie. Cait is in pieces, a mangled pile of wires and cogs and toy fur.

‘Cid! Yuffie exclaims, bounds across to him before he can wave her down.

The Sephiroth in front of them is – is – is beautiful, in a way that he has no right to be beautiful, and not in a positive way, either. White wings holding him aloft in the sky, golden haloes circling about his head, he could be ethereal, if not for the hatred in his face, the single black wing where his arm should be.

‘Why is he like that?’ Tifa asks, and Cid coughs some more.

Yuffie runs a hand down his back, burning hot with the heat of a Cure3. Something in his chest twists and pops; broken ribs, then.

‘He sees himself like that,’ Cloud says with a nod, steadies his grip against his sword. ‘The last few fights weren’t easy. This one’s going to be harder.’

‘Voice of confidence, as always,’ Yuffie snorts.

‘Now would be a handy time to have some of that chaotic energy,’ Cid suggests to Vincent, who flinches away for a moment. Cid regrets it immediately, the look of – of – fear on Vincent’s face not one he’d have ever expected to see. ‘Or not,’ he corrects. ‘Just fucking shoot him.’

He wonders, as he cracks his neck and settles his ankles ready to go, watching Sephiroth watching them, how he’d feel, facing down some monster and not knowing if it was his son or not. To know the mother, the biological mother, of that monster, to know that you were, in some small way, responsible. He wonders if he’d be able to fire.

Cloud hadn’t been lying, which is nice of him. The battle is harder. The battle is so impossibly fucking difficult, and Cid is struggling to stay on his feet, never mind get a few shots in. He manages to tear a hole in one of the wings, but the counter he gets for it does far more damage to him than he did to Sephiroth. Vincent gets overtaken by Death Gigas, of all his monsters, and it rages pitifully against the one-winged angel. Within a minute, Vincent is down in a ragged heap of torn cloak on the floor. Tifa is struggling to keep up, pummelling away and trying desperately to keep them healed, and Cid is out of Ethers, can’t get his MP back up, for all the good it’s done him.

The dragon appears once, trying to help, but she’s got nothing on whatever the fuck Sephiroth is packing, and what little warmth she brings back to Cid’s bones is gone in the same breath after a wave of the bastard’s hand.

He’s tired, he’s so fucking tired, but they’ve got to keep going. They _have_ to keep going. Cloud is still going strong, somehow. Cid’s sure Tifa’s stuffed him full of Hero Drinks, because that seems like the kind of thing she’d do, and he can’t say he disagrees, fuck knows the kid has the best chance of winning this fight.

Yuffie gets a clean hit straight to her chest, and she goes down hard, clutching at her throat.

‘Yuffie!’ Cid roars, and tries to cut across the battle to get to her, a Cure3 already halfway to his fingertips, but then another attack hits her and she hits the ground. ‘Fuck!’

He scrambles in his pockets for a Phoenix Down, but the distraction costs him, has his eyes off the battle for just a single second. That’s all it takes, and he’s blindsided, knocked for six, taken out of play. Whatever other fun synonyms he can think of for the pain ricocheting around his skull the way it is.

He’s unconscious before he hits the ground.

* * *

Cid jerks upright with a hard gasp of air which is, in reality, airless. He forgets, for a moment, where he is, clutches at his chest and stares at stone with wide eyes, trying to piece it together. Fuck, he’s sore. He’s aching in places he didn’t know he had.

‘That’s it,’ Cloud’s saying, breathless and distraught, ‘that’s it, that’s all we could do! That’s – that’s it! There’s nothing else.’

‘But,’ Barret says, and Cid’s never been so glad to hear him wind up to dispute something. ‘But what about Holy?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cloud admits, and Cid manages to roll over, onto his knees.

The kid’s pale, blood-soaked, shaking. They’re back where they were, he thinks, at the top of the steps before the platforms fell away and they hovered in the void of nothingness that seemed to be Sephiroth’s soul.

‘We’ve done what we can,’ Tifa admits, gentle, hands on his arms, fingertips green, but Cloud lurches away before the magic can connect.

‘You’re right!’ he exclaims, too loud, panicked. ‘You’re right! We should – we should go home proud. The Planet will decide, won’t she, whether we’ve done enough.’

‘What about Sephiroth?’ Cid asks, and seeks out Yuffie, negotiating with her uncooperative limbs to sit upright against the wall.

‘He’s – he’s.’

Cloud goes silent, vacant. For a second, Cid thinks he’s about to cry.

‘He’s still here,’ he chokes out, fingers curling into fists. ‘He’s – oh. It’s me. He’s still in – in me.’

The next few moments are some, that no matter how many years go by, and however many ways he tries to word it, Cid cannot ever quite describe. In the one moment, Cloud is alone on a chunk of rock, looking deranged and terrified and very much like he’s about to toss himself into the bubbling Lifestream below them, and the next, he’s whirling about with his sword in both hands and running Sephiroth through. Cid isn’t sure where Sephiroth came from, and in the blinding light that obliterates the bastard in the second following the whole, getting run through thing, he’s not sure where he goes either. Except that he’s sure obliterate is the right word. He’s vaguely aware of Yuffie yelling swearwords he won’t admit she must have learnt from him. It happens too fast, and Cid feels like he’s telling a terrible joke for how he sits there and gawks at the way Tifa leans desperately over the edge to try and grab Cloud as the walls shake and the floor gives out beneath them.

‘Tifa!’ Barret yells, but they’re too far away to do anything.

Cloud catches her, and throws himself at an outcropping, managing to grab it with his one hand. As he hauls them both up onto stable rock, Barret asks what now.

‘Holy should be moving soon,’ Red offers, because that’s a sensible thing to presume.

Then he seems to realise what that means and closes his mouth.

‘This place will be swallowed by it,’ Tifa finishes for him, and she says it quietly, but it echoes around them like a gong.

‘Well, shit,’ Cid sighs, and lights what he supposes will be his last cigarette. ‘It was fun while it lasted, eh? We had our laughs.’

He looks up at the path they’d travelled down, at the unstable, uneven, rocky outcroppings. He doesn’t think he has the energy to climb it again. Even if he did, he doesn’t think they’d have the time to get out.

‘Oh, Lady Luck,’ he sighs, the way he remembers doing during the war, when things seemed impossible, when his flight path was unclear, too dangerous to attempt, when his team were dying around him and he was terrified, too young for the things he was asked to do. ‘Don’t fail me now.’

He’s not sure if it’s Lady Luck that takes pity on him, or if the little hum he hears, the one Aerith would always make when she smiled _just so_ , up to no good but so happy to just _be_ , he’s not sure who it is that answers. But either way, the walls shake, and begin to crumble, and the _Highwind_ drops into the space like she was meant to fit. She’s dented, and damaged, and the glass of the deck is smashed clean through, but she’s in one piece, and she’s in the space, and he’s not about to argue.

‘Everybody in!’

They don’t argue with him, and it’s hard, getting into an airship that’s pointing almost entirely the wrong direction, directly down and bordering on upside down to boot, but they get in, and they wedge themselves into something resembling a safe position.

He’ll tell Shera, if they survive. The next one needs seatbelts.

‘Listen,’ he says, sliding his way down to the steering column, and he hits the buttons to no avail. ‘I’m – Holy’s going to burst out of here, right? If we’re lucky – well. If our luck holds – it’ll spit us out instead of swallowing us.’

‘Either way,’ Vincent offers, in that drab sort of monotone Vincent has when he really wants to be an asshole, ‘we’d have died out there.’

‘Yes, thank you, Vincent,’ Cid says, staring at the wall with his jaw jutting. ‘Any more _really helpful_ observations you’d like to – fuck!’

The air goes very dry for a second, the light blinding, too hot and yet freezing cold, and he manages to yell out an instruction to brace yourself before the ship rattles like it’s about to fall apart and careens upwards. In the rush of air through his ears, the screeching battle-cry of Holy as it prepares to throw itself in the way, he can hear the bang and crash of parts being knocked off. Plates off the body, the deck. One of the engines by the warning lights that flash.

‘Fuck!’ he yells, nearly breaks his leg as he tries to catch himself and stop himself falling, barely manages to grab onto a rail.

The engines aren’t working, the alarms are screaming, and Holy is sending them careening through the sky.

Shera, however, is a far more sensible engineer than he is, and wrote an emergency override into the engines, wired it to a switch. A failsafe, in case the ship was irreparably damaged. She wouldn’t fly for long, but she’d stabilise enough that he could do something with it.

But if he can’t reach it, they’ll crash long before then. Swearing all the way, he stretches, stretches, stretches, his fingertips catch, but not enough.

‘Fucking _come on_!’ he roars and feels something snap in his arm as he manages to get two fingers around the switch.

That’s all he needs to get the grip to pull it, and the ship spirals one way, the other, then settles herself.

The lights flicker, the alarms whine, and then everything stops. The engines whir, the wind whistles through the glass.

Yuffie starts to cry.

‘Oh, fuck me,’ Tifa breathes, drags herself out of the pile of debris she’s now found herself under.

Cid, slumped next to the console, breathes hard.

‘Anyone got enough for a Cure?’ he asks, ‘feels like my arm’s about to fall off.’

Barret staggers over and slaps a hand to his shoulder. The pulse of magic rushes down his arm. It’s not enough to stop his nosebleed, but it’s enough that his fingers move when he tries to move them.

‘Thanks.’

Dragging himself to his feet, he leans hard on the console, looks over the readings the machines are giving him, and doesn’t hold out hope. He lights a cigarette, and the others stagger towards the front of the ship.

‘Holy,’ Red says, and Cid leans to look.

Holy has formed over Midgar, directly beneath Meteor, which seems a lot fucking closer than it did when they entered the crater. Wasn’t there supposed to be a good five days left on it? How has it closed the gap so fast? Has killing Sephiroth sped it up? Has it lost whatever restraint Sephiroth had had on it? Fuck sake, it’s too close.

‘It’s too close,’ he says.

‘What’s going to happen to Midgar?’ Barret asks, ‘to all the people?’

Cid doesn’t know where it comes from, but another one of the fucking cats appears, and Reeve’s tinny little voice pipes up from behind them. He must store them in the fucking floorboards.

‘I had everyone I could take refuge in the slums,’ he says, ‘and I started an evacuation where I could. But I – I don’t – it doesn’t look good.’

A fucking understatement, but with this lot, what else was new?

‘Holy is having the opposite effect,’ Red says, and Vincent nods.

‘It was too late, the barrier isn’t strong enough. It’s going to destroy the planet.’

‘Then what the fuck do we do?’ Barret demands, ‘we can’t let that happen!’

‘What _can_ we do?’ Cid demands, and dismisses a request for a software update, because that’s really what he fucking needs right now. ‘How the fuck do we stop Meteor when it’s so close I feel like I’m in a fucking oven?’

They’re silent for several long, horrible seconds. Meteor gets closer, and closer, and closer. They watch the plates of Midgar get churned up by the clash of energies. They watch Holy begin to be dispersed.

Cid thinks about Shera. He thinks about how fucking glad he was that he told he loved her. He thinks about how maybe next time, assuming that there is a next time, he doesn’t know how this Lifestream shit works. But maybe next time, he’ll be quicker off the mark.

He could have been married. Had a kid. The white picket fence, and shit, maybe he could have made it to space, because he’d have fucking listened to her, delayed the launch. What was six months to his wife’s safety?

‘Look!’ Tifa shrieks, which is so unlike her that they all immediately panic. Cid clutches the steering levers, ready to turn them away at the first warning.

But he needn’t worry; it’s the Lifestream itself, swarming and tearing itself free of the planet to surround Meteor, burn it apart from the inside. They stand and stare at it, watch as Holy’s efforts go unnoticed in the sea of green that is overtaking it, and Cid feels fingers brush his cheek, so soft he thinks he might be crying. Then the short, sharp snap of a nail flicking against the end of his nose, and he jolts back.

‘You fucker,’ he breathes, and Yuffie turns, catches his eye, has the same startled look he can feel in his own eyes.

Tifa clutches the railing, sinks to her knees, sobs. Cloud sits next to her, looking completely lost. Barret stands there, his fist clenched, watching the Lifestream begin to slink away. Red and Vincent stand next to him. Yuffie comes to stand by Cid, battered and bruised but looking refreshed beneath it, revitalised. Alive.

He never thought he’d feel it, but he’s glad she’s alive.

‘Fuck,’ he breathes. He touches the top of Yuffie’s head, and she sinks into his side, soft and her breath hot against his neck. His shoulder is wet, but he doesn’t say a word about it.

‘What now?’ Barret asks eventually.

‘We’ve evacuated almost everyone,’ Cait says, ‘I think we have it under control. Marlene is safe in Kalm.’

‘We need to help them,’ Tifa sniffles, ‘all the people in Midgar, we need to help them.’

Cait nods. ‘I can handle things for a day or two,’ he says, ‘you guys look like you could use a bath.’

He turns to look at Cid.

‘Alright,’ he says, hearing it before he’s even asked. ‘The inn at my place should be empty, Reine won’t charge you to stay. You’re all welcome.’

‘I need Marlene,’ Barret says, ‘I been away too long, and that shit ain’t good for a kid to see.’

‘I have one of my people – _my_ people, not ShinRa’s – on their way to her now,’ Cait says, ‘she’ll be at the inn by sunrise.’

Barret opens his mouth, and then deflates. ‘Thanks.’

Cid nods, scratches his scalp, full of scabs and rubble and dried blood. It makes his eyes buzz, and he just wants his bed. Preferably, he thinks, in some tired little part of him that he hasn’t really bothered to think about, he’d like Shera there, too.

‘Okay,’ he says, ‘then we’re agreed?’

AVALANCHE, the ragtag group of absolute numbskulls that just somehow helped save the world, weary and filthy and with the hint of melancholy that he’d expected to come later, when the adrenaline wore off, nod in his general direction.

He pulls on the lever, pulls the ship around. She whines and moans and protests, but does as she’s asked. Yuffie retches, and he pointedly turns her around, sends her off into the corner to throw up there. Then he pats himself down, fishes out his PHS. Finds Shera’s name, hits dial. Holds it to his ear.

It rings once, twice, connects on the third ring.

‘Captain?’ She sounds desperate, panicked.

‘Put the kettle on,’ he says, and laughs at how panicked his voice sounds, how desperate. ‘We’re on our way.’


	16. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crisis is over, so the only thing to think about now is what next?

Cid parks them on the outskirts of Rocket Town.

Well.

He says that he parks them. Truth be told, the engine begins to cut out as he guides them over the mountains, and it’s not so much parking as it is digging the nose into the dirt and hoping to fuck they don’t end up in the water. Which they don’t. So they stand there for a minute, watching the smoke and the dirt settling and the sound of the waves comes in through the missing glass.

‘Well, that was something,’ Vincent says, and Cid can see the side-eye from here.

‘Best pilot in ShinRa,’ Yuffie adds, too pleased with herself by miles.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Cid snorts, and wipes his face.

He’s tired. He’s so fucking tired. Now that the adrenaline’s worn off, really, properly worn off, and he’s beginning to take stock of what the fuck they’ve just witnessed, what they’ve just lived through, what the fuck has just happened to this shithole planet, and he’s – he’s –

‘Captain!’

A holler, from outside, and he takes two steps out from behind the console when Tifa leans over the railing to peer.

‘It’s,’ she starts, but then hesitates, because she doesn’t know what to say.

‘Big bloke,’ Cid offers, and makes for the stairs, ‘no hair, beard, looks like he belongs in a mine?’

She nods.

‘John,’ he tells her, ‘from the Inn. Come on, then, get your shit and we’ll get into town.’

John is waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder, and he offers something somewhere between a salute and a clap on the shoulder when Cid is in range of him.

‘We saw it,’ he says, and John should not be out here without a weapon, not the way the monsters have been swarming lately. ‘What was going on over the mountains. Meteor.’

Cid nods. ‘We’re fucking lucky.’

‘You’ll have to tell us about it,’ John says, and then, ‘but later, you look done in. And listen, you – I don’t know what you said to Shera, but she’s been in a right state since you left.’

Cid goes to ask what the fuck he’s on about, because Shera had seemed fine when he’d torn himself away barely twenty-four hours ago, but the others have descended the ladder, packs across their shoulders. Looking at them, they don’t look like they’ve just saved the world. They look like a bunch of misfits who accidentally got lost while on a camping holiday.

‘Ah,’ John says. ‘There you are. Come on, Reine’s changed all the beds fresh for you, and bargained with Russ for the nice soap he sells to the tourists.’

Cid wrinkles his nose at this, nearly burns himself with his lighter as he’s midway through lighting a cigarette.

‘Oh, fuck off!’ he scoffs, but obligingly helps John lead the way. ‘The shit he sells to the tourists is the same shit she has in the Inn, just repackaged to look fancier.’

‘It really isn’t,’ John replies, nose in the air, which is hilarious for a man a good head above Cid, and with shoulders twice as wide.

Cid nudges him with an elbow, and John nudges him back.

‘It’s good to have you back, Captain,’ he says, quiet enough.

They reach the town gates, which is mostly just an arch, because they never bothered to affix actual gates to the posts, and Reine is at the end of the path to the Inn, wiping her hands on a towel, broad smile on her face.

‘Cid!’ she crows and extends her arms.

Cid obligingly goes, and she doesn’t protest at the stench of him, damp with sweat and blood and who knows what else. Just wraps her arms around his neck and plants a kiss on his cheek that makes him pull a face.

‘It’s good to see you,’ she says, and cups his face. ‘You look done in.’

‘We all are,’ he replies, looks back at the rest of AVALANCHE, about to fall asleep on their feet. ‘Can you look after this lot for me?’

‘Obviously. I’ll let them bathe and sleep, and I’ll feed them up. You – dinner will be at six.’

Cid nods, steps aside so that Reine can usher them in.

‘Have you seen?’ he starts to ask, but can’t find his voice.

‘She’s at home,’ Reine tells him, and watches Barret trip over the welcome mat, tries not to laugh and nearly fails. ‘She was here all day, but I sent her home. She rushed over to tell me that you were coming. I think she’s had the kettle on a rolling boil since.’

Cid huffs out a laugh, stubs his cigarette out, and looks to his house. It’s still dark, the middle of the night, even if the sky is tinged green with the remnants of the Lifestream fading back into the Planet. If he cared a little more, he might pay it some more attention, think about how the stars shine differently now, how everything has ever so slightly changed, shifted in the skies. But he’s tired, and he doesn’t care.

‘Alright,’ he nods, lethargic. ‘Six? Be there.’

And off he plods with a final pat of the shoulder from John towards his house.

The door’s unlocked, but not open, and he lingers on the porch for a minute. The lights are on, the curtains drawn, and he listens to the sounds of Shera inside. She’s pacing, and he can imagine her wringing her hands. She hadn’t come to meet him, and he wonders whether she’d noticed that the _Highwind_ had crashed down some twenty feet away.

Knowing her, probably not. She’d be so focused on the fucking tea that she wouldn’t notice him walking through the door.

He’s partially right; she notices him immediately but has to do a double take. She’s at the stove, fiddling with the kettle, which isn’t whistling, but is steaming, and she stands there holding it like a fool for several seconds. He stares at her, takes her in; she’d bathed, he can tell by the messy, lopsided bun she’s not taken her hair out of, and her glasses are finger-marked. Her t-shirt is oversized – one of his, he’s sure, though the red looks very, very nice on her, suits her colours – and she’s in some jersey shorts of some kind. He supposes she sleeps in them, but he never really sees what she sleeps in, she’s usually wrapped up when she comes downstairs in the morning if she’s not already dressed. Fuck, he loves her. He loves the red smears of scarring on her knees, the points of her elbows, the way her hair curls when it dries naturally, the – the – fuck, he _loves her_.

‘Captain,’ she says, breathless.

‘I got your note,’ he replies, just as breathless, and finally remembers to shut the door.

She puts the kettle down, wipes her hands on her t-shirt, hovers for a moment.

Neither of them seems to know what to do.

‘My note,’ she echoes, and goes pink in the ears. ‘I thought – I just wanted to make sure you knew.’

He nods. His mouth is dry and licking his lips doesn’t help. He regrets the cigarette.

‘I know,’ he nods, feels the smile tugging at his mouth, wonders if it looks as desperate as he feels. ‘It was – it was – uh – nice – to read it.’

Her smile is just as twitchy, unsure, desperate, and she wrings her hands.

‘You came home,’ she says next, as if asking for confirmation.

He meets her gaze then, properly meets it, and they stare at each other.

‘I came home,’ he nods. ‘To you.’

The smile on her face solidifies then, stretches until it reaches her eyes, and she lights up, chest lifting a little as her back straightens, and he loves her.

He nods to himself, because she’s so fucking kissable, and he wants to kiss her, and he’d _said_ , hadn’t he? He’d said that he couldn’t do it before he left, because if he died, he’d regret it.

But he didn’t die, and he did come home.

For possibly the first time, he’s grateful that the pre-fabs ShinRa shipped out to them were small, that he can cross the floor in three strides, because it means it doesn’t have time to get awkward, and he doesn’t have time to chicken out. Before he can say anything else to himself, he’s toe-to-toe with her, and his fingers, filthy with dirt and grime and monster blood – his blood – under his nails, are on her cheeks, tracing the curve of her cheekbones as his palms cup her jaw to lift her face. She goes willingly, leans into him, even, and her eyes are so bright, a little wet.

‘I love you,’ he tells her, and her smile falters for the laugh that stutters in her chest, her eyelashes fluttering.

‘I love you, too,’ she replies, and even though he knows it, it takes his breath straight out of his chest.

So, he does the only thing he can think to get it back, and finally, _finally_ , kisses her.

Nearly ten years of his life spent wondering what it would be like, dreaming about it, and it’s – it’s – it’s _better_. Her arms loop without hesitation around his neck, fingertips resting against the back of his head so fucking gently, as if aware of grazes and scabs he’d not known he had, the other palm warm against his skin, a weight he could carry for the rest of his life. She fits snugly into his arms, every one of her lines meeting every one of his like puzzle pieces or joinery or – or – or just the curve of her breasts pressing against his heart, the jut of her hip bones against his belt, and fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , her lips are a perfect pillow against his, her nose snug against his.

It’s a gentle kiss, considering how tight his grip on her waist is, and she breaks it with a bump of their noses. He’s cross-eyed to look at her, but her eyes are so bright, her gaze directly on his.

‘I love you,’ she repeats, a whisper that he tastes more than hears. ‘But I think you need to shower, and sleep, and have a decent cup of tea.’

The laugh spills out of him without warning, catches him by surprise, and the weight of it has his face burying itself into her neck, a hiccup, a breathless sob, two, three.

‘You’re home,’ she breathes, fingers playing in the hair at his nape. ‘You’re home.’

He curls his fingers into her waist, tries to hold her closer. There’s nowhere closer for her to be, but that doesn’t mean he can’t try.

* * *

She tuts at him when he finally peels himself out of the shower, still damp at the shoulders and with grime still under his nails, but he did his best, he really did. He’s just – there’s a lot on his mind. Sleep. A decent cup of tea. The want to kiss her again, properly this time.

Mostly, he was too tired and too sore to really dig his fingers into his scalp.

‘Here,’ she says, gentle, and hands him one of the too-big mugs that he seems to have accumulated, filled with perfectly brewed tea.

‘Thank you,’ he says, and leans over the mug clasped in both their hands to kiss her again.

She hums against his mouth, a little note of surprise, but mostly happy, he thinks. Mostly happy.

Biting his lip to stop himself spilling his tea as he peels away, he takes a seat at the table, and she turns to face the cabinets.

‘Do you want to eat?’ she asks, with that bounce in her heels she gets when she’s restless.

There’s a joke on the tip of his tongue, it’s right fucking there, and he thinks that maybe next time, maybe next time he’ll make it.

Instead, he says, ‘we got any of that – that,’ he rubs his eyes, scrounges around in his brain for the name, ‘that bread you had from home, with the fruit and that?’

‘The speckled bread?’ she asks, and he grunts an affirmative, which makes her snort, ‘Reine made some, yes. You want it toasted?’

He hums an agreement this time, and she glances back at him to smile at the way he’s still rubbing his eyes.

‘Do I need to make up the back room?’ she asks, ‘you look like you won’t make upstairs.’

‘I’m fine,’ he assures her, peers up at her from behind a knuckle, ‘just make the fucking toast.’

She snickers to herself and turns back to do just that. He doesn’t hide that he’s staring at her arse this time, because he thinks he’s allowed now. He asks, just to be sure.

‘Am I allowed to stare at your arse now?’ he asks.

She nearly drops the bread, but she does laugh.

‘When has being allowed ever stopped you?’ she asks, looks back at him, and the heat in her gaze takes him by surprise. ‘But it’s fine, I think? I don’t mind.’

He’s falling asleep on the heel of his hand when she places the toast in front of him, and he jerks upright, blinks the haze from his eyes, yawns.

‘Fuck me,’ he breathes, stretches hard enough to crack a couple of joints. ‘Saving the Planet takes it out of you, eh?’

She slips into the chair next to him, steals a slice of toast from the plate, her own mug safe in her grip. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she says, ‘but I’d imagine so.’

‘Might not have saved the Planet,’ he tells her, ‘but you did save my life.’

Then he shoves a slice of toast into his mouth so he doesn’t have to justify or repeat himself. She flushes crimson, stares at her knees. They don’t say anything until the plate’s cleared, but the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Awkward, yes, but not uncomfortable.

‘It’s,’ he starts, as she takes the plate and mugs to the sink. ‘It’s late. You should – you should go to bed.’

She nods, fiddles with a loose strand of hair, tucks it behind her ear.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she admits, ‘knowing you were out there. I thought you were – I couldn’t sleep.’

He gets to his feet, crosses to where she is, strokes a fingertip across her cheek, cups her jaw again. It feels so good, to just be able to touch her.

‘I’m home,’ he tells her. ‘And I’d – I’d like it if you – if you came – if you came to bed with me.’

There, he said it. He’s a grown man, he can say things like that and it not be awkward. It’s totally normal to want the love of your life to come to bed with you, and that doesn’t make it weird or awkward. Not at all.

Fuck sake.

She flushes pink in her ears, down her neck, and her mouth twitches. Her eyes search his for a moment, and he wonders if she’s going to reject him. Is it too much? Too soon?

‘Are you sure you’re awake enough for that?’ she asks, and he feels his brain stop as this information processes.

‘You,’ he says, and then bursts into laughter. ‘Fuck sake, Shera! Not what I – I just meant – just – shut the fuck up, don’t laugh at me!’

She keeps laughing even as she cups his face in her hands and draws him down to kiss him.

* * *

He wakes to the sound of hustle and bustle outside. Yuffie, yelling. Artyom, yelling back at her. He sounds like he’s having fun, so no doubt she’s discovered the bunker or the traps or something else. There’s sunlight, blue and bright and not at all stained red, and it’s been so long since he last saw a blue sky. There’s even a bird or two, tweeting away; yelling about Yuffie probably.

Turning his gaze from the window to his other side, he finds Shera looking back at him, her head pillowed on one elbow, her other fingers tracing up and down the line of his bicep.

‘Hi,’ she whispers, and her smile is brighter than the sun, if it’s only a tiny little curve of her mouth.

‘Hi,’ he whispers back, and traces his fingers down her arm in turn.

‘You slept well,’ she tells him, still at a soft whisper. ‘You were down for most of the night, I think.’

He shakes his head. ‘Nah, couple hours at a time, you know me.’

True enough; he hadn’t slept a whole night since he was about two years old, but instead of pacing or smoking or feeling miserable about shit, he’d rolled onto his side to watch her sleep, the rise and fall of her shoulder, the heat of her breath against his fingertips. She’s beautiful in sleep. Not that she’s not beautiful anyway! Fuck knows she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen! But there’s something about her in sleep that he can’t quite get enough of. He probably spent more time watching her than he did sleeping.

But she doesn’t need to know that.

Her fingertips stroke down his cheekbone, his jaw, the jump of his pulse in his neck.

‘I love you,’ she tells him, like it’s a secret she can’t bear to keep.

He laughs, pushes onto his elbow to get into her space and kiss her.

* * *

AVALANCHE look more fucked than they did before they slept, but at least they’re all clean now. Marlene had, as promised, been delivered before sunrise, and she’s shy as all fuck, but so enthusiastic to see a new town. Ana’s dog proves to be a particular delight, and it’s the first thing Cid sees on leaving the house, Shera at his side.

‘Behind his ears!’ he calls to the girl, who stares at him blankly. ‘Scratch behind his ears, he’ll roll over and give you his belly!’

‘Thank you!’ she calls back, in possibly the sweetest voice Cid has ever heard in his fucking life and proceeds to do as bid.

‘Thanks a bunch, man,’ Barret says from by the Inn’s door as Cid approaches. ‘She’s gonna want a fuckin’ dog now.’

‘Least you can do for her,’ Cid replies, turning back to watch Marlene scratch the dog’s belly.

Yuffie approaches, and Marlene lights up at whatever the ninja says.

‘So, what now?’ Cloud, behind him.

Cid glances back; the kid’s wringing his hands, looks beat. Tifa’s next to him, looks at the spiky-haired brat with so much adoration it threatens to make Cid sick, except he knows that’s the way he looks at Shera.

‘What do you mean, what now?’ Barret asks, ‘people of Midgar, they got no homes now, it’s gone. We gotta help ‘em. Do something.’

‘There should be enough to salvage, shouldn’t there?’ Cid asks, leans on the fence. He glances across at Shera, still watching the girls with the dog. ‘What do you think?’

‘Hm?’ she asks, and he shakes his head.

‘I suppose,’ Barret agrees, because the man has some sense left. ‘What you thinking, rebuild?’

‘Reeve was head of housing,’ Cid tells him, ‘might as well put him to use, if he’s one of the good guys.’

They all nod to themselves. It makes sense, and it’s not going to be fun, or easy, or a quick thing. It’ll take years before they’ve got everyone housed, got an infrastructure. But it’s something. It’s something resembling a plan, at least, even if it’s not set in stone.

‘What are you going to do?’ Tifa asks, and Cid startles at the intensity of her expression.

‘What do you mean? I’m goin’ to fuckin’ help, what else would I do?’

‘Well,’ she says, gently, and he doesn’t miss the way her gaze flickers across to Shera, who has turned to chat to Russ, quiet and animated at the same time. Fuck, he loves her. Fuck knows what she’s trying to talk to him about, but she’s definitely zeroed in on it.

‘Well, what?’

Tifa huffs out a breath, a smile on her mouth. It’s a little bit sad about the eyes, but her voice is soft enough. ‘This was never your fight, not really. And you – you’ve got plenty of reason to stay here.’

Cid stares at her, feels his jaw slacken. ‘Stay?’ he echoes, and then his nose wrinkles, his shoulders draw back and he puffs up. ‘Stay? Fuck off, who do you think you are, huh? Fucking pipsqueak, you even legal to serve drinks? Fuckin’ stay! Shera!’

She turns at his yell, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

‘Yes?’ she asks.

‘Am I going to fucking stay here when this bunch of morons are going to go off an help rebuild Midgar?’

She scoffs, her expression turning confused. ‘No,’ she says, ‘Planet, no. I’ll be coming with you, certainly. And I can’t imagine John or Livas or Grier will want to stay behind.’

‘Thanks,’ he nods, and turns back to Tifa, smug. ‘Tell me again how I’m staying. Fuckin’ brat.’

Huffing out of his nose, he digs in his pockets for a lighter.

‘I was only saying,’ Tifa says, but it’s droll, because she knows well enough that he’s being a jackass for the sake of it.

‘Well, don’t talk absolute bollocks.’

Barret snorts. ‘You made your point, old man.’

Like he’s not older than Cid. Fucking jackass.

Shera comes to stand next to Cid, and he obligingly lowers the cigarette so the breeze doesn’t send the smoke straight into her face, but instead below his knees.

‘It’s going to be a long job,’ she says, helpfully.

‘No shit,’ Barret snorts. ‘Took ‘em years to build Midgar, gonna take even longer to build a new city.’

‘First thing will be to talk to Reeve,’ Cloud hums, thinking aloud. He looks like he needs to go back to bed. ‘Has anyone got his PHS? Cait Sith hasn’t been active since we touched down.’

‘Should be in some of my paperwork,’ Shera says, ‘I’m sure I had his contact details when I first came here.’

Without waiting for an answer, she trots off towards the house, and Cid watches her go.

‘Right,’ he says, pushing away from the fence to head for the Inn’s door. ‘I need a cup of tea. Anyone else?’

* * *

After dinner, they stay until the small hours trying their best to hash out a plan of action of how exactly they’re going to make this all work. Shera begins to drift off, because Shera is a creature driven by a regular sleep schedule, despite her erratic nature, and Cid does his best to prop her up. But her head grows heavier against his shoulder the longer they stay, so he begs off any more planning, and shakes her awake enough to get her upright and walking.

‘Hey,’ she says, finds his fingers and laces hers into them.

He squeezes, as much as he dares, and looks across at her.

‘Hey,’ he replies.

‘I don’t know how much help I’m going to be,’ she says, ‘I can do a lot of the engineering, but I’ve never worked on a big scale, and not on a domestic scale, either.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ he tells her, and pulls her to a stop, looks at her. ‘You’re the best engineer I’ve ever worked with, and you know better than a lot of the ShinRa goons what to do. Won’t take you long to work out how to wire a house. And besides, I – I believe in you. You got the rockets up there, and you’d have been the one to fly me back to earth, too.’

She flushes, laughs once, sighs. She looks at him in a way he’s not entirely sure he deserves, something so full of love and trust and gratitude, and fuck if he doesn’t love her in turn.

‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘that means a lot.’

‘Ain’t nothing to thank me for, ‘s the truth.’

‘Even so,’ she hums.

He tugs her hand. ‘C’mon, time for you to get to bed, it’ll be a big day tomorrow.’

It’ll be a big week, month, year. But he doesn’t think it’ll be bad, not really. He’ll have her with him, and it’ll make all the difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! Thank you all so much for coming with me on this ride, I have had so much fun writing it, and I hope you have all had as much fun reading it! I'm likely to write more canonverse stuff for them, because I love these space kids, and I want them to have all the happiness.
> 
> Much love to you all, my lovelies!!!!!!


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